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A Zodiac Rulership Scheme for the High Octave Planets

I will begin this essay clarifying a basic assumption that I used to develop this scheme: I accept, nay insist, that the ancient Septenary rulership scheme for the Sun, Moon, and five Visible planets holds true and valuable for it's own purposes despite the discovery of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Yet I also hold that the outer planets also rule signs: I see it as a second scheme having to do with deeper (one might hazard to use the word spiritual) character traits, while the visible bodies relate to what might be called the soul rather than to the spirit.

When I am interpreting a horoscope for someone unversed in the significance of the outter planets, I like to explain that just as a telescope is needed to see their physical presence, that experience and an understanding of psychology is needed to see their inner effect upon character. It sems to me, then, that co-rulership of the signs is a superior method to clumsily displacing the old Septenary by placing the outer planets at the cost of the visible planets.

Yet I must clarify one other point before I launch into specifics: This is really a rulership scheme for what I would call lower or higher Octave planets. For I have an additional theory that just as Uranus and Mercury or Neptune and Venus or Pluto and Mars are octaves, that Sol and Jupiter form an Octave and Luna and Saturn form an octave.

I mean to argue all the justification and implications of this theory in a separate essay. For now, I hope that the contribution this idea makes to constructing a rulership scheme that accounts for all of the Planets will stand as one peice of evidence for considering these two additional octaves.

I therefore consider the Lower Octave Planets to consist of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, or the visible planets in the modern Astronomical sense. The Higher Octave consists of Sol, Luna, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. I include Sol and Luna as High Octaves according to several criteria:

1). High Octave Planets are collective and abstract. Thus, Mercury is the messanger and thinker, but Uranus is the sum of all possible messages and the terms on which they do or do not remain meaningful. Similarly, Sol, the ego, is the sum and one might say the pattern of all experiences and efforts at self-understanding while Jupiter is the concrete means of reaching out to new experiences and aquiations-but definitley on the terms of the Ego. Luna is the gestator, Saturn the shaper, the reaper, and the severance of the unbilical cord: or the specific birth of one thing Luna has gestated.

2). Three of the High Octave Planets, as I have said, are detectable only by more deliberate and refined means of inquiry. Sol and Luna, whose joinder and separation are at the root of the Septenary, act as an intermediary by having abstract and collective themes while having visible physical correlates. I believe that this is part of ther function in the Middle Pillar in the Tree of Life, and why they are the focus of the Conjunctio Mysterium. Their themes, that of the Ego and Subconscious, are areas in which things like the thought of Mercury or the passions of Venus and Mars take place. They are also concepts that allow the paradigm manipulation of Uranus, the merger to the collective of Neptune, or the True Will of Pluto to become visible to the student of human nature.

It is their simultaneous visibility and High Octave opertion that allows their marriage to work the marriage between the work of the Outter and the Visible planets.

3). Finally, in an Alchemical appreciation of the Septenary, one sees that the Visible Planets each rule two signs consisting of opposed elements that it is their inner power to wed. This might be seen as the progressing marriage of Cancer (and Water) and Leo (and Fire); which culminates at their polar compliments of Capricorn by the marriage of Air and Earth. It is no accident that these are the only two neighboring signs ruled by the same planet, Saturn the Shaper and Reaper. Yet even in the old scheme there are two distinct levels, for Luna and Sol each rule only one sign, as if they are clearer representatives of one element only.

In the old Septenary, Luna and Sol each have a sign they they rule without a co-ruler, and that does not change in this scheme. Here, the Outer Planets are assigned three signs each. In both the old view and this new way, this is because all five High Octave bodies have a different work to do than to provide means by which oppoiste elements may marry. The five High Octave planets describe a different tale than the Septenary. I feel that the rulership scheme I am about to describe both preserves and extends this too--often neglected alchemical inner scheme of the Zodiac.

The above said, it is time to dive into the nitty--gritty.

CAPRICORN(LUNA, Saturn)

AQUARIUS(URANUS, Saturn) SAGITTARIUS (URANUS, Jupiter)

PISCES (NEPTUNE, Venus)SCORPIO (PLUTO, Mars)

ARIES (PLUTO, Mars)LIBRA (NEPTUNE, Venus)

TAURUS (NEPTUNE, Venus) VIRGO (PLUTO, Mercury)

GEMINI (URANUS, Mercury) LEO (SOL)

CANCER(LUNA)

Some of my choices are not new, and some of my choices will be surprising to some readers: I would like to describe my scheme on its own terms first, and I will give some disproofs of some of the more traditional choices I have replaced as I go, expcept in the case of Pluto as co-ruler of Virgo and Neptune as co-ruler of Taurus: they do not affect the general course of my reasoning and may be argued on their own time at the end.

In fact, it was an experiment displacing Uranus from Capricorn to make Luna co-Ruler in a house holding both halves of it's Octave, that led me to place Uranus in Saggitarius, and Neptune in Taurus. I had been toying with Pluto as the co-ruler of Virgo for some time.

The Horizontal Bar: The Pluto/Neptune Complex

or the Knight and the Queen

First, note that Pluto and Neptune each rule a combination of signs in the Yod, or double quincunx formation. Note that the two Yods are interlaced. I take this as a higher expresion of the Conjunctio Myserium, wherein the True Will meets the Cosmic merger. Also, I take the intense inner struggle of the Yod to represent the essential tension that exists in life within both the will to be and the will to return. Taking these two themes together, the Conjunctio of Pluto and Neptune turns the two yods into three oppositions; a much more resolvable aspect: a reconciliation of the Will to be and the Will to Return.

Consider the signs involved: Aries is between Pisces and Taurus, a fresh impulse to be lodged between one possibility, of extreme disollution, or another possibility, an extreme of concrete incarnation and indulgence mingled with material insecurity.

Across from this picture, Libra strikes a balance between Virgo and Scorpio, two means of trying to perfect the relationship between the internal and external worlds. Virgo can be seen as a desire for inner perfection and purity projected onto management of fine details in the external world, Scorpio can be seen as the exertion of power and manipulation in the external world to escape one's own probing introspection. Here, we have a worldly mirror image of the dillema facing the incarnating will represented by Aries between Pisces and Taurus.

There is another way of looking at this complex. Pluto has Fire, Water and Earth, but no Air; Neptune has Water, Air, and Earth. Each can act as a vessel but are lacking in a mode of positive being that the other can provide for. Pluto can do, have and be, but cannot, in itself, communicate, categorize, or thing. It is the raw Will favored by philosophers like Nietzsche. Neptune can have, communicate, and be, but cannot do. Neptune is the Graal, that must await the questor and even then can only respond if approached with Virtue (as to which virtue--that is another debate!). Both can receive, as I have said, and otherwise we would not have the cosmos we know. For Neptune receives the virile power of being and in exchange Pluto receives the capacity to know other beings as more than objects of action.

Finally, we may look at the Lower Octave planets at work here: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. The Kabballist cannot fail to recognize the four planets below the abyss on the left and right hand pillars.

From one standpoint, we have the powers of separtaion (Mars), concrete union (Venus), developing union or expansion (Jupiter), and communication or abstract union (Mercury). We can see this as the forces of trasnmutation in the material world; specific channels for interaction between Pluto and Neptune. One might recognize, minus Saturn, the basic scheme of Chinese Astrology. But the exact reconciliation is another essay.

In brief, we could say that these are the planets that eventually Sol and Luna will balance to the point that Binah may be approached across the Abyss: they describe the power and one might say the attachments of the Ego. As regents of the marriage of Pluto end Neptune behind them, they remember Godhood only on ther terms of an all--too-apparent mortal life; passions, ambition, and intellectualization. Yet this combination has all the elments and the Three Principles and might be seen as a model for the sort of practical inner work upon personal character that is the real point of Alchemy.

A little more examination reveals other compatabilities with the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, but that is beyond the purview of this current essay.

Overall, we may view the Pluto/Neptune complex of rulerships in this scheme as describing the dilemmas and exultations of being an Incarnate True Will of comsic origin.

A parting comment before examining the next six rulerships: If we view these six signs as forming the horizontal bar of a cross, the bar having to do with forces of material transformation as the expression of the Will and the Whole, the next complex, the vertical bar, can be seen as describing the means of illumination, or some would say escape, rising from the tumult and ambition of the horizontal bar.

This could be seen as a description of how the Rose emerges from the Cross.

The Vertical Bar: The Sol/Jupiter/Uranus/Mercury/Saturn/Luna Complex
or The Fool Redeemed

If the prior theme describes the origin and the quest of our Incarnate Will, this theme describes the age--old sacrifice of the Ego that the Rosicrucians, among many others, have pointed to as the specific tactics to make real the general strategy told in the Pluto/Neptune complex.

Yet a couple of special features of this complex deserves special note: First, that Luna, directly opposed to itself in it's own two domains, makes the Capricorn/Cancer pole the axis of the horoscope.

In other magickal disciplines there has long been evidence of this: note that in Chinese Astrology, that the two associated Animals, Ox and Sheep, in their descirption, are virtually unmodified.

Also, I would cite the structure of the Sigil Dei Aemeth that Dr. Dee used to contact the forces that then revealed the Enochian Keys: In the center, we have a pentagram with an inner cirlce for Levaniel, a Lunar angel; and an outer circle for Sabatiel, a Saturnian angel. This is fitting for a pentacle aimed, after all at reciving and giving shape to greater forces that Dee could, at the time, consider among his available Fires. We will see, also, that the attribution of Semeliel (sic) to the horizontal bar of the Pentagram is an exact analogue for how Sol is the only body to rule only one sign, that of the isolate Ego.

Finally, another Enochial evidence is that in the Elemental Tablets, the Planetary Seniors for Luna and Saturn are both derived from the same column, the Lineus Spirituum Filis.

I may already be overemphasizing what is also, on it's own terms, evidence for the Luna/Saturn octave in general. Yet I want to be clear that in this rulership theory Luna and Saturn become the axis of the Zodiac, for this is an important implictaion of this overall scheme.

Suffice it to say that from the viewpoint of Practical Magick, we move the operation in the direction of Cancer if we are lending it to the forces of development, or we move the operation to capricorn if it is time for our Will to bear some kind of tangible fruit. The remainder of the Zodiac describes assets and specific stages of operation within the grander scheme described in the Luna/Saturn octave.

The next special feature of this complex is the odd triad of signs that Uranus rules, and that I have removed it from it's oft-cited co-rulership of Capricorn to use it to displace the very-often-cited Neptune co-rulership of Sagittarius. Those familiar with Uranus in horoscopes or in magick will see that this is, perhaps, already some proof that Uranus is acting according to its' usual tricks.

Uranus is a planet of revolution; it contains all possible meanings and messages and so is not afraid to overturn a system that has acretted between a few of them for too long. It will surprise noone that I have assigned it to the co-rulership of Gemini as so many before me have hinted at.

Yet in hindsight I find it a little unaccountable that it was ever assigned to Capricorn and never to Sagittarius instead, the polar compliment of Gemini.

Consider the nature of Capricorn: it s ongoing and relentless in it's work, from the hour it knows what that wrok is until the hour of Death: for as soon as Saturn shapes something from the Earth, there is always a new phas eto the same work. That expresses Cardinality, but not Uranus, which would make the Capricorn for characterized by several intensive careers instead of a life--devoted effort. After all, there is another, universally--recognized Saturn/Urnaus rulership that we know very will indeed in Aquarius. Saturn reaps and Uranus moves in a new direction from there. This is not how it is with Capricorn, even when it contains Mars or Mercury.

Instead, we see the gestation of Luna assuring that however concrete the results are, that beyond the Time of Saturn that there remains more time after yet. One astrologer cites the tension between Uranus and Saturn as explaining the tension within Capricorn--involved persons. Yet Uranus would, time and again, release that tension by finding a new path. Instead, the tension is best explained by the fact that though Saturn cuts the umbilical cord time and again, Luna goes on gestating the same project.

This largely cinches my argument for placing Uranus in Sagittarius: We see in the action and enthusiasm of the Sagittarius the commitment and then the overturns we see in the ideology of the Aquarian. Here it is the growth of Mutability and Jupiter and not the contraction and crystalization of Fixity and Saturn and it is Fire rather than Air, that is the other dancer. Yet the commonatlity is clear, and that can only be due to the fact that Uranus co-rules both signs.

Yet some disproofs for the traditional misplacement of Neptune there deserves some comments too. Sagittarius breaks off old enthusiasms only because endings are prerequsite for the beginnings to which Sagittarius is addicted: Neptune, instead, grants release in dissolution. Neptune is the end such that only the abosulte beginning is after it.

Again, we very well know what Jupiter and Neptune are like as co-rulers in Pisces. There Neptune shows its receding hand and, as a formative force, it has not made its' signature upon Jupiters' other sign.

Also, the prior section should show that there is much more of the traditional Neptune to be found with the three signs I have assigned it, interlocked with Pluto. It is more fitting that Uranus guides the firey half of Jupiters' Alchemical Marriage and if Neptune guides the watery half of that marriage: as we will shortly see in detail.

As I have already mentioned Uranus' three signs are in a strange-seeming configration compared to most of the other symmetries that I have taken as a large part of the merit of this scheme. Yet understanding the Uranian method behind the madness will be a natural transition to considering the whole six-planet complex of the Vertical Bar.

Uranus's signs consist of an Opposition, a Trine and a Sextile; a reconcilable inner tension betwen dynamic thought (Gemini) and dynamic action (Sagittarius); the fundamental interdependance of axioms or foundational ideas (Aquarius) with actual mental activity (Gemini) which elaborates and yet is given definition by axioms; and finally the general compatability between maintaining freedom of action and celebration of the moment (Sagittarius) with a desire to know and make real an ideal understanding of life and the world (Aquarius).

Yet there is a simpler way to look at it when keeping in mind the remainder of this particular scheme: Uranus' configuration shows a slight modification in the Yod of Pluto and Neptune that allows for release or at least new alternatives.

A Yod, after all, consists of two quincunxes and a Sextile. Quincunxes occur between two signs that are genuinely different and not readily in communication. Their capacity to create actual blockage where a Square or Opposition creates tension or static, is well known to any practicing astrolger.

An Opposition is dynamic, consisting of two ideas that are complimentary and even necessary to one another. A Trine is the strong compatability between to aspects of the same element. Like 150+150 (the sum of two quincunxes) 120 and 180 (opposition and trine) add to 300. They have a Sextile between them also: but one tension has been accepted between poles and as a result, a powerful inner compatability is found: instead of a pair of blocking differences.

It is as though Uranus, anticipating the tension of a double quincux bent like a bow instead: to use the natural compatability of axioms with thought to moderate the tensions between adaptable thought and adaptable action. This bending is a Uranian manuever; and the ongoing interaction of themes described here is exactly what Uranus does generally. Noone who understands this planet can doubt the comptabilty of this triple rulership with what is empirically known about Uranus when it is compared to the Yod formation assigned to Pluto and Neptune.

Indeed, the reader will have begun to anticipate how Uranus plays a literally pivotal role in making the Vertical Bar the means of relieving the tensions of the Horizontal bar.

Yet let us be clear that Uranus also neds this adventure itself: lacking earth and Water, Uranus cannot be or have or be given to by itself. This is indeed a set of failings one might expect of Trickster.

Yet we must first look at the last High Octave body to be examined in this scheme: Sol. Sol alone has no second rulership. but like Luna has one sign that is all it's own. I suggest that this is the role of the Ego; not partaking of any of the other traits it co-ordinates and later tries, falsely, to identify with. It is the ego that can weave a soul around the spirit so that the body may be a living vessel; yet it is the ego that must die and be reborn and until the Ego learns to do this, it is isolated and neither satisified nor yet aware of it's own most fatal flaws. Sol has no second Sign to rule because the Ego never acheives identity with what it juggles.

Therefore Sol is also the only High Octave planet that does not share a sign with its Lower Octave, Jupiter. That is no accident nor is it an accident that Jupiter is paired up with Uranus the planet of transformation, and (in the Horizontal Bar) Neptune, the planet of return to the whole.

Note that Sol is opposed by Uranus and Saturn, the death and rebirth Sol requires ruling over the house of the ideals that the Leo Ego espouses and soon betrays for the sake of glory. As a counterpoint, we have the Gemini/Saggitaris axis, which might be seen as the trickster aspect of the ego setting out on the adventures that will bring wisdom at last. Here, Jupiter, Sols' Low Octave co-rules with Uranus and is dynamically opposed by Mercury and Uranus together: and we rememebr that mercurey was a guider of souls and the explainer of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Together, they can be seen both as the initiatic Hierophant guiding Jupiter on the adventures it's High Octaves' needs, and as the model for communication that the ego needs to learn to understand others on their own terms. It is notable that this last point is reminiscent of how Pluto must recieve exactly that gift from Neptune.

Uranus is running nearly the whole show by being across from sol, and across from and co--ruling with Sols' Octave. Yet these two themes are crossed before the true Axis of the chart, the Cancer/Capricorn axis.

By itself, Luna in Cancer alone can only gestate the ego on it's current unsatisfactory terms. yet it is also in Cancer which demands birth and indeed also contains death too. It is teh overall scheme whereby the Ego learns it's place and yet is exalted thereby;Jupiter lets' it adventure forward along this path, and Uranus and Mercury are sure that the lessons tehmselves do not go unlearned.

Yet it is the way Uranus bends in contrast to the deeper marriage of two Yods that might be, over aind again, the lesson in felxibility and release that is the most important for Sol to learn.

In the meanwhile, like Isis and Leminkainens' mother Ilmater, Luna rests in Cancer seeing that nearly no mishap will prove truly fatal.

Yet this is only a partial sketch of the whole story this rulership schem tells: For just as the Septenary describes the Union of Leo and Cancer thorugh the Elemental marriages of the Low Octave Planets, we can use the same scheme using only the High Octave Rulerships instead:

  • Aquarius/Capricorn: Saturn, Air/Earth
  • Pisces/Sagittarius: Jupiter, Water/Fire
  • Aries/Scorpio: Mars, Fire/Water
  • Taurus/Libra: Venus, Earth/Air
  • Gemini/Virgo: Mercury, Air/Earth
  • Cancer/Leo: Luna/Sol, Water/Fire
  • Aquarius/Capricorn: Uranus/Luna
  • Pisces/Sagittarius: Neptune/Uranus
  • Aries/Scorpio: Pluto/Pluto
  • Taurus/Libra: Neptune/Neptune
  • Gemini/Virgo: Pluto/Uranus,
  • Cancer/Leo: Luna/Sol

I do not mean to exhaust here the implications the preceding table suggests, yet a very general summary is in order: The ego seeks to encounter the Lunar subconscious; it contacts its Plutonian Will and takes on Uranian personal transformations: in fact, it is needed to Will one's own chnages. There is a response, at least a glimpse, from the Neptunian collectivity; it will be both earthy and yet distantly aestehtic also. As the seeker becomes more capable of direct actions, it becomes neccesary to examine secrets that the ego has even at this stage kept form itself: and the Plutonian True Will begins to make itself known. At last, the Transforming Ego of Uranus comes into an encounter with the Neptunian Collective, even as the Solar Ego has already some into the sum of all of the Self's Egos. At least, there is a gestation and possible rebirth, in the Capricorn of Luna as Urnaus in Aquarius, the transfigured Ego, comes into full and concrete communion with the Moon it sought from the start.

As far as my overall scheme goes, this writing will do for now. Yet it remains to give a few remaining arguments, for those who are interested, about some of the choices that I made for Rulership schemes.

CONCLUDING ARGUMENTS

As far as assigning Pluto to the co-rulership of Virgo, I would first like to cite a vast body of evdience that, like other of my choices in this scheme, could all along have pointed the way here: I refer to the general acknowledgement of a co-ruler for Virgo to account for the amoral, perverse, willful, and generally Scorpionic traits often observed in Virgo-involved persons which Mercury , Earth or even Mutability alone cannott account for. Often Astrologers will speculate about nonexistant planets like "Vulcan" or the Galactic Center as the Co-ruler of Virgo: and tehy will describe the traits of the "mysterious" co-ruler of Virgo very like how they will describe Pluto in the same text-without drawing what, in hindsight, becomes the clear connection!

It has been said before that one of the major reasons to place the Outer Planets into this ancient art is that their effects have indeed all along been observed but never before properly attributable.

Uranus and Neptune are disqualified as co--rulers of Virgo because they involve a release that, left to itself, Virgo only has in achievement (and sometimes not then); and even if their current placemnt warranted any kind of change from what I have suggested above, Sol or Luna by themselves can hardly account for the ongoing self-scrutiny of this sign; and mercury's behavior in Gemini make it equally unlikley that this Trickster Planet in any way accounts for the nearly impossible standard Virgo will often set. I suggest that it is due to Pluto trying to remember in a wrold of concrete and often petty details that there is a True Will behind it all.

If we view Pluto as a planet of action, it is not hard to see that Aries represents direct Action, Scorpio represents subconscious action and Virgo represents considered or complex action.

Finally, Pluto needs Mercury as a compliment for Pluto in a way that no other Low Octave planet can provide: Together, they are the Logos, the Word that was and was With God. Past the Viel of Saturn, Pluto and Uranus make the Word just as Neptune is the Sophia. Within the realm of saturn, only Mercury can fufill this office.

Something remains to be said for the placement of Neptune as the Co-Ruler of Libra and Taurus.

Obviously, one consideration has been that they are octaves, and every planet but Sol co-rules with it's Octave in at least one sign. This is only fitting.

It is hard to see how the planet of Concrete Connection could rule a house of abstract appreciation, definition, and balance without a counterpoint: and if Neptune is the sum of all connections between all things, it provides the arms of the scale for which Venus is then the pivot. This becomes especially sensible when one is aware of Venus' role as the Chinese moving principle of Metal.

Yet what does Libra balance: I suggest that it balances the two basic options facing it's own counterpole of Aries: I have observed that Aries is presented with the Neptunian dissolution of Pisces or the Veneral solidity of Taurus. Yet Pisces contains Taurus inasmuch as Taurus takes it's indulgences within a broader cosmos into which it dissolves again, and Neptune as much as venus make steh attractions, liasions, and joinings that Venus craves in the Earth. In fact, if one accepts that there is indulgent as well as abstinent gnosis, we see that Neptune is all along complicit in the work of Libra's more solid arm.

Yet all of these points I consider only a little more than interesting compared to the overall scheme itself: For one of the benefits I see in this newer arrnagement is exactly that quite a few of the older Mysteries can be now more clearly read from the pracical if ancient art of Astrology.