Pisces 21º: Under the watchful and kind eye of a Chinese servant, a girl fondles a little white lamb.

09:27, 03.12.2015, Pisces 21º

pp. 281-282     AN ASTROLOGICAL MANDALA, by Dane Rudhyar (1973)

SECOND LEVEL: EMOTIONAL-CULTURAL

PHASE 351 (PISCES 21º): UNDER THE WATCHFUL AND KIND EYE OF A CHINESE SERVANT, A GIRL FONDLES A LITTLE WHITE LAMB.

KEYNOTE: Growth in consciousness in its earliest tactile awareness of the wonders of unsophisticated living.

This symbol recalls the one for Phase 174 (Virgo 24º)––"Mary and her little lamb"––but it occupies a different position in the five-fold sequence and a new factor is added: the "Chinese servant." According to the occult tradition, the original Chinese race was an extension of the humanity (or "Root Race") preceding ours––thus the stress upon the biological factors of family and ancestors, and also on the dualism of the Yang and Yin interplay. The "Chinese servant" represents the past as a servant of the new evolution. (The "white lamb" suggests the sign of all beginnings, Aries.) This new evolution is just about to begin during the late Pisces phase of the year cycle. It is as yet an ideal, a white loveliness. The girl discovers the new feeling of the touch of wool and of animal warmth. The preceding five-fold sequence began with a symbol suggestion the inspiring revelation of new truths or facts which the creative person is seeking to formulate. Now we witness another kind of discovery––a sensuously emotional discovery, perhaps a presentiment of the mother-feeling.

This is the first symbol of the seventy-first sequence. it brings together past and future, an overlapping of levels. The Chinese kindly watching the white girl; the girl fondling the white lamb. There is charm and ingenuousness in the scene––a vision of WHITE HOPE, a hope for a future that can only be felt, almost naïvely.

Girlcapsule's 2¢:

Here is an informational excerpt from Rudhyar's introduction of the Sabian Symbol system:

pp. 16-17  (Rudhyar's italics):

In the Sabian system, the cyclic structure...is founded upon a pattern derived from the relationship between the day and the year––periods which constitute the two most basic factors in the structuring of human experience. It is true that the year contains more than 360 days, which means that the earth rotates more than 360 times around its polar axis during a complete revolution around its orbit; but an intriguing feature common to all celestial periods is that they can never be measured in whole numbers and no planetary cycle is an exact multiple of another. 

This means that one has to distinguish between archetypal and existential cycles and relationships...The 360-degree zodic is a formula of archetypal relationships; but our human experience presents to our consciousness a slightly larger sequence of days and nights. The 360-degree cycle refers to the meaning of experience; the days-and-nights sequence to the facts of experience. 

We shall see how this 360-degree pattern subdivides itself geometrically through a two-fold, three-fold, four-fold, five-fold and six-fold rational segmentation. Such interior processes of subdivision of the organic series of 360 degrees define various patterns of relationship and subsidies of degrees which, considered in their entirety, constitute the structure of a cycle of meanings. No cyclic series of symbols can be considered significant which does not reveal some definite kind of internal structuring, however interesting and apt isolated symbols may be. 

This is why, in my opinion, out of the few sets of 360 degree symbols which have been recorded in Western astrology only the Sabian symbols should be considered truly valid. Other sets might reveal an equally significant internal structure if carefully studied and reformulated, but I have not seen any work done in that direction. The issue here reaches much deeper than a superficial evaluation of this or that set of 360 symbols. It deals with the difference between a holistic and an atomistic approach to human experience and to life or knowledge in general. 

When we deal with any cyclic series of factors or phases, merely to consider the character, quality and value of the symbolic representation of any one of these factors as a separate entity without an essential (or structural) relationship to all the others makes no sense to the holistic mind. Every phase no doubt has a character of its own which can be described in one way or another, but this character should be given some kind of functional or "organic" meaning in terms of the cyclic process as a whole. If one looks at the process of growth of an organism every phase of that process has a functional meaning in relation to the preceding and succeeding phases. It does not represent an isolated occurrence. In the same way, if one studies the 22 Tarot cards or the 64 symbols of the I Ching, one is dealing with a succession of phases referring to a whole process; the 12 signs of the tropical zodiac––which as a whole refer to the annual cyclic relationship of the Earth to the Sun––likewise have meaning according to their position in the complete cycle of the year.