With Pliers and Safety Goggles

This is the seventeenth 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.

Last time, we (finally! 😉 ) answered a question you might have been grappling with ever since this series started: What will you get out of this? Why is it worth doing this kind of inner work with the planets?

And I hope I not just answered this question to your satisfaction, but also whetted your appetite and, hopefully, encouraged you to actually do the work.

(If you haven’t yet, don’t despair – today is the very best day to get started! 🙂 )

Anyway. Some of you might have some trouble identifying their own planetary coins, their vices and virtues. This is just human, after all. We’re all somewhat blind when it comes to ourselves, aren’t we?

So let’s quickly discuss a few options, just in case you should indeed have some trouble figuring out yourself…

You might recall that I suggested two approaches to contemplation and reflection last time, a more systematic and a more personal approach.

Generally speaking, the personal approach has the advantage to focus on what is more important or most pressing to you right now. On the other hand, using the personal approach, you might end up turning around in the same circles you’ve always turned around in.

The more systematic approach has the advantage of forcing you to look at all planets. Yes, including the ones you have a hard time connecting to. Or the ones which (seemingly) don’t give you any trouble.

Or, in other words, following a systematic approach to planetary contemplation and reflection will inevitably force you to also look at your blind spots!

Thus the easiest way to achieve more clarity about your own planetary coins is to go through all the planets methodically. Don’t skip any just because nothing comes to mind, or because they aren’t the obvious troublemakers in your life.

Instead, give each of them his or her share of time and attention. And over time, you’ll notice just how many planetary coins have been hiding in plain sight…

Another method to gain more clarity about your own vices and virtues is to sit down regularly for a few minutes, ideally daily and with a notebook. Each day, pick one event which stood out most to you during the day. This could, for example, be something you found outrageous, intimidating, worrisome or which riled you up. Or something which didn’t go well from your point of view.

(As you can guess, here you can learn more from the things which didn’t run smoothly than from the things which did!)

For the situation you have chosen, figure out which planet’s coin you were most strongly acting out. From your point of view, was this a vice or a virtue of this particular planet?

In the next step, go through the other six planets one by one. What might they have done in this instance? How would it have changed the situation and its outcome?

In this second step, at first, you’ll most likely come up with over-the-top obvious ideas, with the cookie cutter stuff. E.g. for Mars, to buy a sword and point it at the obnoxious coworker to finally, finally make them shut up!

But the strategies you come up with for the other planets won’t do you any good if they don’t fit your personality, and you don’t feel comfortable or able to act them out in your own life. Thus your last assignment is to go through the planets again, all seven of them – and to find some way in which you could have acted out one of their coins.

What could you have done, thought, or said (or not done, thought, or said, for that matter) in order to act like Venus in this situation? And like the Sun?

Make it realistic, please. If you can’t really relate to Jupiter, or if the Moon simply isn’t that strong a presence in your life and your personality, then don’t dream up acts of boundless generosity, or of always going with the flow. Instead, come up with a tiny act of generosity (even if it hurts you to consider being generous to that nasty neighbour!), and with a tiny act of being more relaxed (even though all the other drivers really are nuts these days!) 😉

To sum things up, if you have trouble identifying your own planetary coins (and who hasn’t, at least from time to time?), the best way out is to acknowledge this and to put in some work.

You can either go the systematic route, or use personal experiences as points of contact (or both, of course). Either way, the important thing is to do it, even if you don’t seem to get many insights at first. Once your subconscious has been primed to watch out for these issues, it will happily do so for you.

As in general contemplation and reflection, the more personal approach has the advantage of helping you to figure out the things which are pressing in your own life right now, whereas the more systematic approach has the advantage of forcing you to consider all the dark corners of your self, even the ones you’d rather avoid or simply can’t see without a flashlight pointed at them. Thus combining both can be the most valuable path forward.

How is this approach to inner work with and through the planets different from other kinds of inner work?

As you’ve seen in the first half of this essay series, between them the planets cover all the likely and unlikely issues of human life on earth. From birth to death, from love to hate, from thought to emotion, from action to inaction – you name it, there’s a planet ruling over it.

Thus what makes enlisting the help of the planets for your personal inner work so helpful, at least if you do it somewhat systematically, are two things:

First, they won’t let you get away with anything. Left to our own devices, there are certain corners of ourselves which we like to work on, like favourite rooms in a house which are always neat and clean, and any untidiness or spilled drinks get cleaned up quickly. But there are also other corners of ourselves, the ones which we’d much rather avoid, or of which we’re not even aware they exist.

Going through all seven planets, whether in an ascent, a descent or in any other order, will inevitably shine a spotlight into all our corners, including the dark ones without any light fixtures, and the dusty ones with all the cobwebs.

Thus through their beautiful inherent balance, the planets are strong allies for our inner work.

The second advantage of this kind of inner work might be even more important, though.

As humans, we are complex critters. None of us is pure Venus, or pure Saturn. In fact, even if you should think of yourself as “a Mercury guy” or “a Sun person”, you have traits and coins from all seven planets. Some more hidden, some in plain sight.

Considering all the seven planets and the coins you personally have in your soul’s pockets will considerably expand your options in life.

For example, even an artist who thinks of himself as “Venus type” might choose to start a fight when it’s warranted. Even a meticulous and painstakingly thorough Saturnian bookkeeper might benefit from knowing that there are other approaches she could take – if only to recognize some Mercurian lose-and-fast handling of records by others. And somebody who is prototypical Mercury in his job can have strong traits of the Moon in other areas of his life.

No matter the situation, you always have at least seven options – and usually more, as the planets aren’t one-dimensional beings either. They each offer us various coins, and each of these coins can be employed in various ways.

Thus doing the simple contemplations and reflections which I’ve laid out in this and the last essay will, over time, considerably broaden your options in any given situation. And with more options, you can choose to react differently – and thus change your life, one small reaction at a time.

And with these (motivating, I hope! 😉 ) thoughts, let’s wrap this topic up for today. We’ve still got some other stuff to cover in this essay, and will get back to your vices and virtues next time again anyway…

In the last essay, we didn’t just talk about what results you can expect from your inner work with the planets, and about contemplation, reflection and subsequent action as one way to approach it.

We also discussed the order of the planets, from Moon to Saturn, and its significance. And you might remember that last time, I mentioned not just the planetary order, but “order(s)” in plural – somewhat cryptically suggesting there might be others.

So far, we’ve interpreted the order of the planets rather literally based on the Hermetic descent and ascent of souls through the planetary spheres:

In this order, the planets form something like a ladder, with the Moon being at the “bottom”, the closest to earth, and Saturn at the “top”, the furthest away from earth.

Within this ladder, two planets stand out immediately: Saturn as the topmost, as our connection to higher spheres – and the Moon as the lowest, the closest to material reality, on which the full weight of the ladder rests. Without the Moon’s strong connection to our earthly existence (as evidenced e.g. by the tides of the sea), there would be no meaningful connection between our lives down here, and the divine up there.

We discussed some of the significance of this planetary order last time, and how you can use it for your own inner work. But is this the only planetary order possible? Or could there be others?

Well, the short answer is: No, there couldn’t be any others – but of course, yes, there are! 😀

As to the longer answer: Hermeticism relies on a certain view of the cosmos. In this cosmos, there is a specific place for each planetary sphere, and their order is fixed. Considering them in any other order simply doesn’t make much sense, as the inherent “meaning” of the planets for us as incarnated humans relies on their specific position in this planetary order: Saturn has a different meaning and thus different effects than the Moon.

Thus, nope, in a strictly Hermetic sense, any other order of the planets is not only not possible, it would also be rather pointless.

But of course, we don’t have to follow the Hermetic worldview to the extreme. And just because something might not be very helpful in a certain spiritual sense, for our rise back up to the divine after our final incarnation, doesn’t stop us from putting it to helpful use elsewhere in our lives!

Thus the second part of the answer is: yes, of course other orders of the planets are possible, and yes, of course they can be helpful!

Thus, after poking and prodding at the planetary ladder in the previous essays, and getting some first ideas of what to do with it in our inner work, the next essays will take some of these ideas further, and will give you more shapes and planetary orders to work with, and consequently yet other views on yourself and your life.

We’ll approach these other orders leisurely, though. Instead of throwing the well-established ladder overboard and starting from scratch, in the remainder of this essay, we’ll first bend the existing sequence of planets a bit – and yes, I really mean we’ll “bend” it, as you’ll see shortly! 😉

So don your working gloves and safety goggles, grab your pliers, and get ready to help me bend this solid planetary ladder into another form…

A bit further above, we talked about the importance of the Moon: It’s not just the closest to us (and, besides the Sun, the most visible and most impressive object on the sky!). It’s also the lowest rung of the planetary ladder – the element on which the full weight of the ladder rests in material form.

This gives it a very special position in our work with the planets, and of course a considerable influence here on earth.

(Science is only slowly figuring out just how important the Moon is for many natural processes. We won’t go into detail here, but simply consider the force of the tides, and you’ll get a good idea of the power and influence of the Moon.)

Spiritual and occult practitioners have caught on to this long ago, though. For example, in some Hermetically-oriented traditions, using suitable aspects and relations to the Moon is one way of linking the influence of the other planets to the material world, e.g. in the creation of talismans.

But there is another planet which stands out to us humans through its massive importance for life on earth… It is, of course, the Sun.

You’re most likely aware of the influence of the Sun for life on earth (if not, go read some doom fiction about what happens when the Sun falls dark). But what is the significance of the Sun in Hermetic thought? And how does this significance show in the planetary order?

We talked about the importance of the Sun back in the essay about him, and you might want to re-read it to refresh your memory.

What I didn’t spell out explicitly back then, but what you as astute reader might have read between the lines, is that the Sun in all his facets represents a sense of self, of being a separate, special person:

You are you, and you have every right to be you – this is one of the lessons the Sun teaches us.

Not surprisingly, the downsides of these coins are egoism, and insufferable arrogance. But just as the physical Sun is, quite literally, the linchpin of our solar system, so is the Hermetic Sun the linchpin of ourselves and of our personality in this incarnation. Consequently, in some astrological approaches, the Sun denotes the self, or the querent.

Or, to put it succinctly: Everything revolves around the Sun!

But why, then, is the Sun just one among seven planets, just one rung somehwere in the middle of the ladder? Well, not quite: He s one rung not just somewhere in the middle, but he is the middle of this planetary ladder.

The position of the Sun in the planetary order (Moon, Mercury, Venus – Sun – Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) is a subtle hint on his importance, on the fact that he is the linchpin of this Hermetic planetary universe.

And this is where we start out today, to create a slightly different planetary “order”. Still in the same sequence, but represented by a different image and shape, with subtly shifting meanings, there is yet more which the planets have to teach us.

Thus I hope you put on your safety goggles earlier, ’cause now we’ll get our hands dirty! 😀

Take two pairs of sturdy pliers. With one of them, grab one end of the planetary ladder, down towards the Moon’s end. And with the other pair, get a good hold on the other end, up there next to Saturn. Make sure you have a solid grip, as we’ll need all our strength.

(The planets are quite robust and not easily ruffled by human antics, btw. So don’t be worried about hurting them, or about breaking anything.)

Ready? Awesome!

Now let’s bend the two edges of the planetary ladder towards each other. Come on, you need to put in more force. Yet more strongly… yes, just like that!

While we’re breathing hard and are pressing with shaking arms, the ends of the ladder start moving towards each other – the ladder is bending in the middle, right where the Sun is placed.

And after some considerable effort, somewhat sweaty and with muscles aching from the effort, we put the pliers away and take a good, hard look at what we have crafted:

It’s an upside down “V”. What used to be a straight planetary ladder is now a folding ladder – and the Sun is sitting right at its top!

These are still the same seven planets, in the same order, but in a very different arrangement. Where the emphasis used to be on the Moon, and on Saturn and what comes above his sphere, it is now on the Sun as both the linchpin and the ruler of the planets.

But there are also some other interesting effects. Suddenly, there are pairs of planets standing vis-à-vis: The Moon and Saturn at the bottom. Mercury and Jupiter above them. And Venus and Mars on opposite rungs right below the Sun’s spot at the top of the folding ladder.

So what do we do with this revised ladder? How can we put it to use?

(In our inner work – we’re not talking about a solar system-sized apple harvest here!)

Why, we’ll use it for contemplation and reflection, of course! 😉

But since this essay has covered a lot of ground already, I’ll leave it you to play with this new shape in the two weeks until the next essay comes up, to contemplate it and reflect on it (and to put your results into actions!).

One thing I’d advise you to do, though, is to draw a sketch of this new planetary order. It will help you get a much better feel for it, and will greatly enhance what you will get out of your contemplations and reflections.

You might also consider getting some suitably bendable wire. Mark the “positions” of the planets on it with a pen or masking tape, equally spaced, with the Moon at one end and Saturn at the other. Then bend it such that the sharp bend comes to lie exactly in the position of the Sun.

Literally having the planetary spheres “in hand” like this will shape not just the wire, but also your perception – and maybe give you other ideas on what to do with them in your inner work…

We’ll get back to the planetary folding ladder next time, and also to some other stuff we could do with our pliers and working gloves.

Until then, I look forward to your thoughts and questions in the comments below! 🙂

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Image: Jimmy Nilsson Masth on Unsplash