We Are Not One Zodiac Sign. We Are ALL Signs.
In his book, The Pagan Christ, author Tom Harpur made a statement that drove me crazy, because he didn’t provide any details. I even considered contacting him directly, but learned that he passed away last year on January 2, 2017. Based on his deep understanding of our spirit’s relationship to the divine, I imagine his spirit is residing in eternal bliss with the divine now. He was a very special soul and I highly recommend his book.
This was his commentary that captured my imagination:
In the ancient gnosis, as the soul advances through the scale of evolution, he or she passes through twelve grades of being, adding to his or her estate the quality gained at each level, until his or her absorption of the essence of all nature is complete. These twelve qualities of perfected spiritual understanding are what are represented by the twelve astrological signs of the zodiac. In the ancient wisdom, the sun’s journey through each sign, acquiring the special powers of each, symbolized the soul’s round of the elements and the acquisition of the 12 intelligences … these twelve aspects create the potential for Christ consciousness.
What were these 12 intelligences? I had to know. Because above all else I want to develop my Christos consciousness and transcend this illusion for good.
I became totally fascinated by the idea that the mythical “Jesus” figure spent his first year “traveling about with 12 disciples.” In fact, these were not human beings. They were the 12 signs of the Zodiac— from which he (a myth, not a man) gathered the 12 intelligences required to advance from human to divine spirit. In other words, we are not ONE sign. We are ALL signs. Each sign of the zodiac represents a learning experience for each one of us — one that we have to embrace to advance beyond this material plane.
I kept googling and googling. I found a few interesting related tidbits, but nothing that provided a satisfying mount of information to truly get at the heart of the concept. Then, by sheer luck, during an indirect search, I found book written about this very topic — The Gospel and the Zodiac by Bill Darlison. Bingo! I could not have been happier.
In my opinion, this insight is so important to our spirit’s development if our goal is to transcend this worldly illusion. So, I’m going to document the 12 intelligences over the next year — starting with the beginning of the zodiacal cycle — Aries. This sign of the zodiac represents the birth of our spiritual life in God — and the struggle of a new life to establish itself in the midst of death and decay. It’s not a coincidence that it coincides with spring.
Ptolemy, who wrote a hundred years or so after Mark, and whose work reflects the astrological traditions of antiquity, tells us that “although there is no natural beginning of the zodiac, since it is a circle, they assume that the sign which begins with the vernal equinox, that of Aries, is the starting point of them all.”
Your Divine Spirit in Aries (March 21 to April 19)
To advance spiritually and become the pure divine beings we are meant to become, we need to deeply learn the lessons that each sign represents — not merely read our daily horoscope for lighthearted entertainment.
Here is what we need to learn while our spirit is living within Aries — confidence, specifically in being independent.
You need confidence to start your spiritual journey, because you have to become an individual — and that’s not easy. It means that you must emotionally and intellectually separate from your family, friends, and society. Otherwise, you’ll be held down in this world by the influences of others, including their expectations for your life.
It is said that the Apostle Andrew represents Aries. And Andrew represents strength and our capacity for endurance, confidence, and courage — all valuable qualities to begin our solo spiritual journeys.
To explain this concept, Darlison first cites the biblical passage Mark 3:31-35, then explains what this means for our spiritual development.
Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.’
‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ he asked.
Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.’
Darlison explains what this means beyond Christianity’s simplistic and literalist view:
“We do not need to interpret it in the way traditional Christians do. Instead we can view it as a symbolic rejection of all those inherited influences, which subtly inhibit any attempt we might make to discover our own unique calling. The family is the carrier of culture and we are encouraged to obey its voice as we set the goals for our life. Refusal to conform takes enormous courage, particularly when one’s particular family has all the trappings of apparent respectability and success.
But as Arien Erich Fromm tells us, individually has a high price: ‘When one has become an individual, one stands alone and faces the world in all its perilous and overpowering aspects.’ This is too daunting for many.
In this account of the spiritual requirements symbolized by Aries, Dan Rudhyar, one of the foremost astrological thinkers of the 20th century, says that leading a spiritual life — which, whatever else it is, is a life of genuine self-discovery, of establishing individuality — is never easy because it implies an emergence from usually quite binding and possessive psychic and social matrices: family, culture, religion, tradition, way of life, and this will often involve strenuous confrontation.
The first three chapters of Mark dramatically describe the qualities required to affect just such an emergence from restrictive social ties. They are the qualities displayed by the archetypal Arien, Abraham, who found the ram caught in the thicket, and who left the land of his birth to go to a place that God would show him. They are the qualities of Moses as he leaves the securities of Egypt in order to find the Promised Land. They are qualities of the Buddha as he rejects the luxuries of home in his pursuit of enlightenment, and of Huckleberry Finn as he travels down the river in search of himself.
They are the qualities which all who seek to follow Jesus must cultivate as they prepare to embark on the interior journey.”
What’s more, the intelligence we develop in Aries provides the raw energy we need to gather in preparation for the next sign of the zodiac: Taurus — which represents our attempt to define our relationship within the material universe.
So, do you possess the courage required to embark on your solo spiritual journey without the restraints of family and societal “rules”? Without this quality, you’ll likely remain stuck in this world, even if you think you are “living a spiritual life.”
Watch for the next post on the intelligence we all need to acquire in the zodiac sign of Taurus.
