Aries 08º: A large woman's hat with streamers blown by an east wind.

13:30, 03.31.2015, Aries 09º (late posting)

p. 55     AN ASTROLOGICAL MANDALA, by Dane Rudhyar (1973)

PHASE 8 (ARIES 08º): A LARGE WOMAN'S HAT WITH STREAMERS BLOWN BY AN EAST WIND.

KEYNOTE: Protection and spiritual guidance in the development of consciousness.

This somewhat strange image can be understood if every stated feature in it is clearly analyzed without preconceptions. Here again we see a woman; but now her head is covered with a large hat—a protection against the forces of nature, i.e. cold and/or the penetrating rays of the sun. At this emotional-cultural level (Phases 6 through 10) the mental processes are still largely undeveloped; thus they need protection from the elemental forces of life. A too great openness to the Sky-energies and the "spiritual" level could lead to obsessions of one kind or another.

The symbolic image implies a rather strong wind. thus the activity of some more-than-material, and especially psychic, forces. These originated in the East, traditionally the seat of spiritualizing and creative-transforming influences. The woman's hat has streamers, which enable it not only to respond to the wind but to indicate its source. In other words, the image symbolizes a stage of development of consciousness in which the nascent powers of the mind are both protected and influenced by energies of a spiritual origin. This suggests a probationary stage in the process of individualization. Under protective guidance a still more receptive person (a woman) is being influenced by spiritual forces.

This is a third stage symbol in which we see the first and second stages of this second five-fold sequence producing results which require PROTECTIVE FORMS (which is what a culture and ethical precepts provide) and SENSITIVITY to spiritual energies.