Signs From Above

This is the eleventh part of my essay series “Inner Work with the Planets”. If you haven’t read the earlier parts yet, I suggest you start with part 1 to get the most out of this essay.

Well. We’ve come a long way, up from earth, on our journey through the seven planetary spheres, haven’t we? Saturn surely was a very fitting end of this journey, with his focus on old age and death!

But… is this really it? Once we’re past Saturn’s sphere, will there only be a great void of nothingness? Well, I suggest we’ll go and have a look – and I invite you to join me in taking the last few steps out of the limits of his sphere and into the space beyond…

And what opens up before us is space. Vast, beautiful space, filled with bright shining stars.

On leaving Saturn’s sphere, we haven’t fallen over the edge of the world (and tumbled right down onto the turtle which carries it 😉 ), but instead we have entered yet another sphere: the eigth sphere of the fixed stars.

(I hope you’re not disappointed that this essay series hasn’t ended after Saturn. In fact, it’s not going to end anytime soon – we’re just about past the halfway mark right now, with the bits focusing on practical application still to come…)

So here we are, right among the stars, and among the signs they form. There’s Regulus in Leo right in front of us, and turning our head just a bit, we can spot the red shine of Antares in Scorpio. How beautiful they are – and how very far above the planetary spheres!

But what’s the point of being up here? How do the stars and the signs matter to us? And will we stay here forever, or will we be back on earth in time for dinner? 😉

As to the latter, I can assure you we’ll definitely not stay here forever, and we’ll get into the reasons for that further below. Whether you’ll be back from reading this essay in time for dinner is up to you, though!

In order to answer the other two questions, we’ll need to take another dive into the Hermetica, and into the worldview of the old Hermeticists. You might remember how we started out on this journey, namely with the Hermetic story of the creation of the first Human:

This first, prototypical Human wanted to create just like God creates, and with God’s permission, he descended through the planetary spheres down to nature in material incarnation, where they fell in love with each other and united. From this results the dual nature of all humans, as we are both divine and material at the same time.

Of course, descending this far down brings its own challenges. Suddenly, the first Human wasn’t equal to the planetary spirits anymore, or even their superior. Instead, they rule over us humans in our earthly incarnations.

But the old Hermeticists knew that there is a way back up, back to the Divine origin – and that we long to get back there. And while we don’t know much about their actual practices (or rather: we can’t even say for sure if they even performed any actual practices!), some Hermetic texts strongly suggest rituals and initiations which allowed the practitioners to ascend back up the planetary spheres, up to the eigth and ninth sphere.

(The ninth sphere, in case you’re wondering, is the sphere once up from the fixed stars, and a lot closer to the divine Source. In the Hermetica, it’s portrayed in similar ways as “heaven” used to be portrayed in stereotypical stories for children, with angels aka spirits sitting up there, singing and praising God. Well, sort of, but since we won’t go there, we’ll leave it at that.)

So by ambling our way up the planetary spheres, we have, in some way, made the same ascent the old Hermeticists might have made – but of course in a vastly different way. While our ascent was mostly done by grasping with the mind, and maybe (if you followed my suggestion to let things sink in a bit and mull them over) by contemplation, theirs might have gone a lot further:

Through certain rituals of which only fragments and hints have been traded down to us, they might have ascended all the way up through the spheres, to the eigth sphere and beyond, for real.

Now, I’m not suggesting these folks had spacecrafts, of course. 😉

When I say “for real”, I don’t mean in material reality, i.e. with their physical bodies. But there are other parts of us which can well travel on their own, even when our body is snuggled up in an armchair.

For example, imagine the last time you travelled to another place. Which place was it? Remember the experience as vividly as possible, with all your senses: see, hear, touch, smell, taste this place again. How did it feel to be there, and how does it feel now? What did you think when you were back at this place, and what do you think about it now?

Congrats – you just travelled to another place. Not with your body, but with some other parts of you. In fact, if you really focused on this experience, you might have been so firmly engaged in this other place there that you could even have missed some things happening around you here.

When the old Hermeticists used certain rituals to ascend the planetary spheres and go beyond, they also didn’t ascend with their physical bodies, but with other parts of themselves. In our culture, we tent to dismiss these other parts as “not real” – after all, you “only” travelled in your imagination a minute or so ago, and not “for real”, right? 😉

But your non-physical parts are powerful, and one shouldn’t underestimate them. For example, people have been talking themselves into illnesses just by imagining to have them, such is the power of imagination.

And of course, once our time of material incarnation will be over and we’ll make the ascend through the spheres again back to the Divine, we’ll do so without a physical body, too. So maybe, just maybe, this ascent is something which can never be done in a spacecraft anyway?

Remember also that at the very beginning, I explained how the idea of the planetary spheres going ever higher up, or being nested like layers of an onion, is only a model, but not how things really are. Thus expanding ever further outward in physical space might get you to interesting places – but not necessarily up to the next planetary sphere!

In any case, it could well be that the earlier Hermeticists had rituals which helped them make such an ascent during their material lifetimes, in order to pass through the planetary spheres, and get closer to the Divine in the eigth or even ninth sphere.

Do we know how their rituals worked, and how they looked like?

No, unfortunately not. As I said, we also can’t even be sure if they really performed any rituals, initiations, or similar things. But the idea is compelling, and would certainly be in line with the concepts of Hermeticism, with the Hermetic texts passed down to us, and with similar rituals from their time and the culture around them.

(If you should be wondering if one couldn’t re-create such a ritual… well, sort of. Not the original ones, as we know too little about them – plus, is your old Greek or Egyptian better than mine? 😉 But yep, rituals to similar effects can be created. How do I happen to know this? Well, lemme just say I might have something interesting in the works, but not quite ready to publish yet…)

But let’s put the past aside, and instead focus on the here and now: on the wonderful view we have up here, and on what reaching the sphere of the fixed stars might mean to us.

In the past few essays, all through the spheres of the planets, we’ve focused on digging the planetary coins we own out of our soul’s pockets, and looking at them a bit more closely than before. We’ve also considered both sides of each coin, and how we might apply them more productively in our lives.

So here we are now among the fixed stars – way above the spheres where we picked these coins up in the first place, during our initial descent into our current bodies and personalities. In theory, we could have returned them to the stash of the respective planets on our way up, ready for somebody else’s divine spark to pick them up on their way down to incarnation.

But of course, we’re still very much alive and kickin’, and very much tied to our physical bodies and our material incarnation. Thus fully getting rid of these coins, i.e. of the influence of the planets on our existence, won’t be possible for us at this stage.

As you might remember from one of the earlier essays, as humans we are of dual nature: both divine and material at the same time. You might also remember that we considered how this is both a burden and a gift – again at the same time.

The place where we rest right now and enjoy the view, above the planets and among the fixed stars, is a place which, according to Hermetic tradition, we’ll reach again in full after we finish with material incarnation, i.e. once we have learned all the lessons which are for us to learn down there on earth, and have done everything which is for us to do down there.

Can we speed this process up? Sure – and the ascent we’ve done together is one possibilitiy of doing so.

Consider this: You picked some planetary coins to work with during this lifetime (or rather, your divine parts did), and among other things, these coins define your personality during this life. Now, you could decide to learn the related lessons of the planets sooner – or you could decide to push them off and learn them later, potentially after many more lives.

The choice is all yours, of course. 😉

But by consciously climbing up this planetary ladder, maybe even more than once, by working with the planetary concepts and archetypes (and their spirits and other entities, if you are so inclined), by getting to know your own coins and finding ways to apply them more productively in your life… you’re pulling forward some of the work you’d have to do later anyway, after this material incarnation of yours.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that over time, all this inner work with the planets will also make a difference in your present incarnate life – finding more productive ways to deal with your own personality and to apply your traits and character to better effect can make a noticeable difference, and these effects will add up over the rest of your life.

Thus while we can’t fully reach this sphere of the fixed stars with all we have yet, while still being of dual nature, we can certainly reach it with some parts of us. And not just reach it and enjoy the view, but actually put the lessons of the ascent to good use!

So far during these essays, we’ve taken our time and have looked closely at each planet, in order to get a better feel for them and their effects (and our related coins). But it might be the case that by looking at all the individual trees from close up, you can hardly see the forest anymore. 😉

Thus we’ll do another ascent together some time soon, to sum up the process and tie things together. This second ascent will be more practical and focused on application, and less about the background things.

But first, we need to get down again. (After all, how else would we be able to climb up yet again?) Before we do so, though, let’s take one last look around. Not just to enjoy the view (which is splendid up here among the stars!), but also to consider the implications of this sphere for us and our lives…

Up here, we’re not just among the fixed stars, but also among the signs they form. Regulus, for example, teams up with some other stars to form the sign called Leo. Spica with yet others to form Virgo, and so on.

Since the planets carried so much meaning, you might be wondering if the fixed stars do so as well – or maybe the signs they form?

And indeed: In the Hermetica, there are various references to the twelve signs of the zodiac, i.e. the 12 star signs through which the Sun moves over the course of a year. For example, there are references to twelve sins or bad habits one needs to get rid of in order to ascend to the divine. Applying these twelve things to the zodiac suggests itself, somehow. 😉

Thus we can find the same concept here as for the planets, this time applied to the fixed stars and the signs they form: There are coins (habits, attitudes, …) we can pick up from them, and these can be applied as vices or virtues. E.g. Scorpio has a very different effect on us humans than Pisces – but both Scorpio’s effects and those of Pisces can be put to good, productive use, or to bad, destructive and unhelpful use.

(If this should remind you somewhat of the Hermetic concept of “as above, so below”, in this case in the form of “as above with the fixed stars, so below with the planets”, then maybe that’s because it’s an application of this concept… 😉 We’ll get into this a bit more in the next essay!)

According to Hermetic thought, the fixed stars and signs have as much of an influence on your life as the planets, even though they are a bit further away, and might be somewhat harder to grasp sometimes.

What you do with their influence is up to you. But in the end, if you want to get back to the Divine where you belong, you will need to find ways to deal productively with this influence. This includes shedding what doesn’t belong to you in the respective spheres, and working your way back here and then further up.

After our final incarnation here on earth, once we’ll reach the sphere of the fixed stars “for real”, we’ll have made most of the ascent back to the divine. What will the remainder of the ascent bring? Well, I guess we’re going to find out once we’re there. 🙂

For now, you have the option of ascending back up through the planetary spheres, up to the fixed stars above them, for as often as you like – after we’ve descended back to earth first, of course.

You can use each of these ascents productively, in dealing with some of your planetary coins (and the second half of the series will go into much more practical detail about ways to do this, so stay tuned!).

For today, though, we’re done up here. Take one last look around if you want to admire the stars in all their glory one last time, and then let’s prepare for the descent back down to earth, which we’ll tackle in the next essay.

Today’s essay has been pretty abstract, I’m afraid, but I hope you’ve enjoyed it anyway. 🙂 Next time, we’ll not just make our way down again, but we’ll also wrap up the first (more theoretical) half of this series. It has built the groundwork for the practical applications which we’ll get to in the second half.

Until then, feel free to use the comment section for not just (duh!) any comments you might have, but also to ask questions, share experiences, discuss ideas from the essay, etc.

The next essay will go up in two weeks, on Sunday June 29th – see you then!

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Image: Micky White on Unsplash