Higher Octaves: The Outer Planet Conundrum
AUTHOR’S NOTE: While reading Aleister Crowley’s Eight Lectures on Yoga, I came across his brief analysis of the ten planets of astrology, the seven “classical” orbs of the ancients and (at least in part) the three modern planets.
Back in the 1970s, esoteric astrologers considered Uranus, Neptune and Pluto to represent the “higher octaves” of Mercury, Venus and Mars (that is, at least spiritually, they operated on a “higher arc” than the practical and psychological curves scribed by the original three). Although traditional astrology did not assign the outer planets rulership or any other dignity since they weren’t known at the time, current practice is to treat them as the rulers of Aquarius (originally Saturn), Pisces (originally Jupiter) and Scorpio (originally Mars), respectively, with their detriment in the opposite signs; other dignities such as exaltation and fall are more open to speculation. In my own work (which is primarily horary astrology), I rely on them very little.
In Crowley’s estimation, Uranus is the highest expression of the “True Will,” achievement of which is the first milestone in occult advancement according to his system, leading to the epiphany known as the “Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.” (As a somewhat reluctant mystic I don’t place much store in religious assumptions of any kind, so I’m not a Thelemite). According to Crowley, Neptune embodies “spiritual intuition” and “the imaginative faculty” (fairly standard definitions today), particularly those qualities associated with “fantasy, infinite pleasures and infinite perils.” Of Pluto he says only “of him it is not wise to speak;” the “answer is profound” because “nothing at all is known about him.” There is very little here to apply to any exercise in practical astrology.
I have made more headway in coupling them to the Qabalistic Tree of Life. At least provisionally, Crowley placed Pluto in Kether, Neptune in Chokmah and Uranus in Da’ath. The only swap I made is that the cryptic planet Neptune makes far more sense in nebulous Da’ath, while replacing the “Wheel of the Zodiac” with Uranus — the planetary ruler of astrology — in Chokmah is infinitely more satisfying. In addition, as the mythological Titan who was the father of Saturn (the planetary signature of the subsequent Sephira, Binah), Uranus in Chokmah initiates a logical progression (to borrow from Winston Churchill, Da’ath is primarily “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”). Pluto — which is sometimes thought of as “the Dark Sun” or “the Sun behind the Sun” — seems to fit best when sitting on the Middle Pillar as the mediator between the “Veils of Negativity” and the physical Sol, with Neptune next in line but invisible below it. Pluto strikes me as a “cosmic messenger” and the more arcane twin of Mercury, the “solar messenger,” while Neptune confounds the message to keep it from the uninitiated, an objective shared by the path of the High Priestess on the Middle Pillar, which contributes by shrouding the bridge across the Abyss.
The correspondence of the outer planets to the Major Arcana of the tarot is also fraught with some uncertainty. For its part, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn didn’t use them, but modern practice observes the aphorism that “Nature abhors a vacuum” and it must therefore find a place for them. Thus, watery Neptune is sometimes ascribed to the Hanged Man (an assumption with which I generally agree). But seismic Pluto and radical Uranus are a toss-up; some observers connect Pluto with Judgement because Fire and vulcanism are compatible ideas, while putting unpredictable Uranus with the Fool seems to suit that card’s erratic, “air-head” nature. Personally, I like Pluto as the Fool astride the right-hand path leading out of Kether high up on the Tree, with Neptune as the Hanged Man and Uranus as Judgement positioned on the left-hand paths connecting Geburah, Hod and Malkuth at the bottom. (I realize this is a “scrambled paradigm” that downplays the “higher octave” premise for Neptune and Uranus, but I believe there is metaphysical justification for it in my own model of the Hermetic Universe.) On the Tree, everything above Malkuth is on a higher trajectory.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on October 20, 2023.
