Correspondence Course in Astrology

by Carl Payne Tobey

Lesson #24

Human Relationships

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The only real freedom is found in solitude, but solitude is not insurance of freedom, because in solitude the average person is thinking in terms of the outside world. The great seers and religious leaders would go into the mountains to peer within, and the mathematician finds his greatest truths within himself. The work of the creative artist comes from within, to be imitated by others. Most of the population spends all its time imitating. There but a few creative souls. However, the majority of the work that an astrologer is called upon to perform deals in human relationships, and that brings us to comparison or charts. Boris Sidis, the psychologist, once head of the New York State Pathological Hospitals, was of the view that as you increase the number of people in a group you lower the average intelligence. They start imitating each other. They begin conforming, and the intelligence level continually drops. That would be to say that if you would be intelligent, be alone, and think for yourself.

By the time that an astrologer can read charts, he should also be able to compare charts, for the procedure and basic principles are the same. One person is born with Mars conjunct Uranus, while another is not, but if the second selects a marital mate with Uranus at the same zodiacal degree as his Mars, he will take on the same characteristics as the first man who was born with Mars conjunct Uranus. Associating with other people is one way of completely changing your horoscope and your life. It can often be the means of shortening one's life, or it might be the way of accumulating fortune and a life of ease. If you are working with enough people, you are no longer an individual. You are like one cell in a biological system or body. You must, from that time on, obey the plan or pattern of that group, which may be a very unintelligent plan. You become a slave to the group unless you can be sufficient of a leader to alter the pattern of the functioning unit. In this, few people succeed, principally because they never try. It is easier to copy, imitate, and accept the will of the majority.

People think they want freedom, but they do not accept it because of their fear of insecurity whereas there can be no real security without freedom. Real security is found only within one's self, for without freedom there is no vital force, and without vital force there is no security. A man may cling to his boss for reasons of security. He may do all of his dirty work, but in the end the boss can and will fire him when he is no longer of value to the boss.

When you have handled personal relationship problems for thirty years, you will realize that most human relationships that hang together are based on fear and insecurity. The marriages that last longest are not based on love but on insecurity. People live together because of their fears. They fight like tigers. They irritate each other, but not enough to overcome fear of insecurity. They don't dare live alone. There are marked exceptions to this, but they are few. The most important thing we should strive for is human relationships that are not based on fear of insecurity.

We are obsessed by the idea that we must accept what society thinks about human relations, and society is stupid, knowing little or nothing about such matters. We copy. What do others do? What did Moses say? What did he tell us we must do?

What is there to indicate that Moses was any more intelligent than Jim Smith? True, he was a leader, but how intelligent a leader? In what field of knowledge did he excel? Why are we so dull as to accept his word as that of God? Have his rules ever worked? Have they cleared up the problems of society or human relations? Most decidedly they have not. Have they given happy marriages? They have not. Are we to underestimate the intelligence of God to the point that we accept the rules of Moses as the level of intelligence of God?

If you are to solve human problems, you must toss all these obsolete rules to the dogs and start thinking for yourself. Throw them all out and start from the beginning. What do YOU think? What do you HONESTLY think? Start there.

People put up a front. A marriage may appear to be a very happy one from the outside, but when wife or husband consults an astrologer, the other side of the story comes out. Each may try to convince the other that he or she is happy. Unhappiness may be a deep inner secret, something one tries to keep to one's self, but there it is. The fact is that close and intimate relationships become a strain. They lead to all sorts of ailments. Conceal your true inner feelings and put up a front for relatives and the public, and you get one form of illness or another. Sex becomes merely a means of easing a tension. Alcohol becomes the anesthetic to dull the pain.

Are there no happy marriages? Yes, there are, but these are the ones where individualism is allowed, where intellectual interests predominate, where individual creativeness is allowed to exist, and where mates are not dependent on each other for security, where neither party is draining the other of vitality and life.

Square aspects develop the greatest emotionalism and introduce the factors of family survival. Mars and Scorpio, Taurus and its ruler, wherever it is, would do the same. Trine aspects introduce creativeness, sextile aspects intellectuality. The conjunction will depend on the sign occupied, as well as the planets involved. The opposition aspect introduces change of one form or another. The semisextile and quincunx aspects develop insecurity.

One of the great problems of marriage as we know it is that it subdues individualism, for one party or both. It is better if we respect each other's right to individualism, and that we develop our own individualism. Some conjunctions, most sextiles and trines, and some oppositions will help this process along, but more so when Fire and Air signs are involved rather than Earth and Water signs. We refer to "some" conjunctions and oppositions, because combinations between Saturn and Neptune are seldom if ever beneficial.

Change is one of the unrecognized necessities of life and good health. That is why vacations- are sometimes helpful. The marital institution often does not recognize the necessity for change. You are supposed to have a steady job for security reasons. You 'are supposed to own your own home as soon as possible. That will keep you in one place, tie you down, keep you busy making repairs, and help life to become stable, monotonous, boring, routine, frustrated and unhealthy. Children might help you break out of the rut if you don't subdue them by beating their brains out. Children have youth and are born with a lack of knowledge of conventions. They are not yet ready to settle down in the tomb. Oh yes, if it is what is recognized as a good secure marriage, you also make certain to buy a cemetery lot, for isn't that the most appropriate place for such a marriage?

A good astrologer has to listen to the client. It is well to let him or her get it all out of the system first. That is why it is also good to tolerate 10-page, single-space letters.

If someone wants to get married, first try and find out why. You'll get some pretty good answers on this one. Probe a little. Don't accept the answer, "Because I am in love." That is seldom the case. The young girl is often seeking freedom from her parents. Next, she must seek freedom from her husband. One lady tells us that her deceased husband always came home and tossed his salary in her lap. She would like a man to come home and toss money in her lap. Many people get married because that is what you are supposed to do. They accept the least of all evils insofar as they are able to estimate in advance. Many people are lonesome and need company. This is a terrible affliction, for they have never discovered their own inner selves and probably never will.

Some people get married because they want to raise children, and this seems to be the one lofty and only legitimate reason for marriage. If both parties are interested in the development of the children, that keeps them from getting in each other's hair. Without the desire to have children, people would be better off to live together as long as they want to, and go on their way when it becomes too monotonous, as it usually does. They could still be individuals, without all that com- plete frustration.

Aside from children (Aries), the next loftiest reason for marriage is an appreciation for beauty (Libra). When two people can help each other to seethe beautiful in the design of nature, there can be mutual happiness. A young client put this very nicely. "When I see something beautiful, like a beautiful sunset, I like to share it with someone." That helps when the other person has an appreciation for beauty, but many people have none. They may bluff along, but their aesthetic sense has never been developed. This could apply to many of our modern artists who see only the grotesque, and portray it. They are not lifting anyone up. They are dragging them down.

If you want to judge the effect of one personality on another, merely take the first person's chart and insert the other person's planets in that chart in another color of ink. Read them just as if they had been there at birth. There you have it. It is as simple as that, but first, you must be able to read a birth chart. Reverse the procedure, and do the same with the second chart. Practice on cases you know well. You will find a lot of explanations for things. Try it out on all the marriages you know.

Uranus aspects are often most prominent in bringing about divorce. The divorce rate increases to the point where some people are alarmed. They are alarmed because people didn't used to get divorces. What's wrong with people nowadays? People didn't used to ride in automobiles, either. What's wrong with automobiles?

Marriage is supposed to have been much different years back. People didn't get divorces. There was never any quarreling. That was because the man was king in his home. The wife did not argue. It was her role only to obey. If she didn't, she got it. There were some restrictions. There is still an old statute in Connecticut which says that a man can beat his wife only with a stick the size of his thumb. This was a great advantage to fat men. Their wives behaved. However, this would seem to indicate that the wives may have been quite sturdy, when a man couldn't handle one with his fists. He needed a club.

There is no foundation for the belief that we must think of marriage as a holy institution. It is a man-made institution. Its original purpose was to make certain that children were supported by fathers and would not become a burden on society. It was also a way of supporting women, who were supposed to be the weaker sex. Women were property, and we have always protected property rights first. In some places, women were purchased as property. In others, parents paid dowries to get men to relieve them of their daughters and support them. Holy matrimony has always been a pretty cold-blooded economic affair. Our modern less holy matrimony is less cold-blooded.

The complexion of marriage within the last fifty years has changed greatly. Girls are educated now. They vote. They take jobs. They smoke cigarettes and drink cocktails. When the writer was a boy, there was a woman in the community who drank beer at home. Not one woman in a community of 2000 people ever spoke to or mixed with her. She was isolated from all except her husband and three sons. This was but two miles out side the limits of the City of New York. It was whispered that any woman who would take a drink was a prostitute.

Human relations have changed. They will change more. Rules and regulations will change as people become enlightened. However, we must review these matters if we are to consider human relations astrologically. We must start with no misconceptions. We must realize that one of the worst obstacles involving human relations is the outmoded conception that we are battling to maintain. We must realize that up till now some form of selfishness is the foundation upon which most of our conventions are built. We must realize that hypocrisy and frustrations have been accepted as virtues. It was long accepted that you put up a front, but what you did behind closed doors was all right. There is the old story, told many years ago, of the elder Morgan of Wall street calling the younger Morgan on the carpet for having been seen out with a woman, not his wife. The younger Morgan is supposed to have pointed out to the father that he was doing nothing that the father was not doing except that the father did it behind closed doors. The elder man is supposed to have replied, "Young man, that is what closed doors are for."

Younger people are facing the facts of life. Doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, judges and welfare workers are facing the facts. They are no longer viewing marriage as a holy institution, but we still have to protect children.

One of our greatest aims should be to stimulate greater freedom in all human relationships and allow people to get rid of their fears, conscious and unconscious. A girl with a good job is more careful in the selection of a mate than the girl who is trying to get out from under the pressure of the retarded conceptions of her parents. Marriage is not likely to be happy when it is a form of escape from something. Good Uranus aspects between charts provide liberalism and relationships which grant greater freedom and individualism.

When Neptune gets involved in marriage, there are strange results. If the aspect is an unfavorable one, there can be that which we call - scandal. Scandal is that which is contrary to accepted standards, that which is not looked upon as "holy." Dr. Worden, one of our students, has stirred up considerable discussion about Neptune and its sex factor, which has opened up a new conception of sex as embodying the entire water triplicity of Scorpio, Cancer and Pisces, which also means Mars, Moon and Neptune. Neptunian people have different ideas about marriage, some very unselfish ideas, but scandalous according to almost any standards. The idea that marriage should be based on unselfishness is more than society could bear at this time. It is more acceptable that it should be based on passion rather than upon compassion. We find passion in Scorpio and Mars, compassion in Pisces and Neptune, and the profit motive in Cancer and the Moon.

The Cancer type of marriage can be a financial success and can supply ample frustration. The Scorpio type of marriage can supply passion, jealousy, lots of fights, personal injuries and sometimes murder. The Pisces type of marriage can supply unselfishness, compassion, sympathy and scandal. All can supply children. The ancients described the Water signs as fruitful.

Jupiter will always help any relationship because it leads to education and social revolution, something we need badly. It leads to enlightenment. This is true of Sagittarius, but watch the points of the Venus and Uranus nodes in Sagittarius and Gemini. They alter things. They become more involved. Favorable aspects between Jupiter and Neptune but particularly the conjunction between charts, are excellent. They lift things. Mars-Jupiter combinations are passionate but harmonious. They ultimately contribute to great liberalism, although jealousies may have to be passed through at the start.

Pluto-Aries indications lead to greater independence. Saturnian combinations lead to the greatest of all frustrations plus every kind of hypocrisy. The same for Capricorn. Venus and Libra will stir interest in beauty, art, music, good clothes, and at the highest point, in the abstract.

It has always been customary to look to the 7th House where marriage is concerned. This is justifiable because the 7th House relates to the type of people to whom you are attracted. Any planet in the 7th House will help to describe the person who attracts you. The sign it is in will be important too. The sign on the cusp of the 7th will be important, as well as the condition of the planet that rules the 7th House. However, let us not stop there. After a while, unless you have very stimulating aspects, marriage will become a routine affair including budget and economic discussions. The gilt wears off. What was previously interesting is less interesting when you see it all of the time. Of course, if you have Saturn in the 7th or Venus in Capricorn, you may suffer and bear it. Venus conjunct Saturn, or Mars conjunct Saturn, would help along the same lines. The important thing is that once marriage has become a matter of routine, it no longer has any relationship to the 7th House It shifts to the 8th and becomes a Saturnian affair itself. But, if you had one or more planets in the 7th House at birth, there are bound to arise new interests. You will be attracted to the new again, unless the planet is Saturn, Mercury or "Y" (ruler of Taurus). These would tend to tone things down and keep them on the conventional side.

Seventh House factors, and these are to include all opposition aspects, but particularly those between charts, tend to introduce third parties. Unconsciously, a husband may introduce the very men to whom his wife is naturally attracted. Of course, it works the other way, too. Signs of the zodiac occupied by the planets involved are always important, because the Earth signs will always try to keep things on a practical basis. The woman with Saturn in her 7th will be attracted to those she meets through her husband, but only from a point of view of duty. She will serve them, but she wouldn't be likely to have an affair with them. Other planets can produce different results. An opposition of Venus between charts will very often produce adultery.

Venus was long known as the goddess of love. It all depends on what you mean by love. Venus seeks the beautiful wherever she can find it. She knows nothing about monogamy. Never heard of it, in fact, unless she happened to get involved with Saturn. Venus enjoys beautiful women or handsome men wherever she finds them. She is social. She is refined. She desires beauty everywhere, in art, in the human form, in music, in clothes. Her personal interest is not really in sex, but she will go along with it. She will try to refine it and raise it above any taint of the gross or vulgar. It is Mars that can be gross or vulgar. Venus is not passionate. She can love many if there is the beautiful. She is seeking something higher, much higher, something few people ever understand. It was an astrological chart that first caused the writer to begin to delve more deeply into the nature of Venus and Libra, the sign it rules. Why had he awakened with the complete solution to a mathematical problem that had never entered his head before? A whole flock of planets in Libra. The whole thing was nothing but a matter of balance. The ancients had symbolized Libra with the scales of balance. Everywhere in nature there is balance until we, ourselves, tip the scales. In the solar system the centrifugal just happens to balance gravitation, although the centrifugal and gravitation are merely names for something science doesn't really understand any more than it understands electricity or atoms. Balance, everywhere in nature, if you but open your eyes to see it, but without a good Venus, or a developed Venus, you will neither see nor understand it. Kepler's laws of planetary motion, design, balance, all represented by Venus. Venus can make a good mathematician. Everywhere in mathematics, there is balance. With the equal sign, you form a mathematical equation. It is only an equation when there is balance. Kepler and Newton understood balance. The great mathematicians all understood balance. They all described mathematics as beautiful. A beautiful woman is one with balanced features. What does all this have to do with the goddess of love? What does it have to do with love? The young man who had to have someone with whom to share beauty. When people can share beauty, they are in love. Love, an 11th House matter, not of the 5th or 7th, as so many supposed, the 5th being the 7th of the 11th, the 11th the 5th of the 7th. This is a different kind of love. There is no passion. It is a love of beauty and of sharing. The 11th was the House of Friends. Those are friends with whom you can share beauty, even if you are married to one of them. Here is the acme of human relations, the sharing of the beauty of the universe and everything in it. Everything runs according to mathematical laws, even human dynamics, the solids, the crystals, the hexagons, the snowflakes. Even the wild mob in Little Rock, Arkansas, is obeying a mathematical pattern. It erupts the first time, after Neptune enters Scorpio, when the Sun conjoins Mars, ruler of Scorpio. Snowflakes obey geometrical laws. Bees obey geometrical laws, while the mob of Little Rock obeys geometrical laws.

Where do we find the highest expression of love? Strangely, in the Family Reform Dynamic Guide, strongly suggesting that the whole family relationship needs to be revised. The whole basic principle of the "family" relationship is to pit group against group -- the Hatfields and the McCoys -- race against race -- the whites against the Negroes, the Arabs against the Jews. Big mechanized wars belong to Pluto and Aries. Smaller family or racial wars belong to Mars and Scorpio. The Little Rock mob erupted when Neptune reached Scorpio and when the Sun conjoined Mars.

Under any circumstances, the education and philosophy of the individual is to be considered important. These are something others cannot take away from you. They are not like money. You can be drained of your money or your nerve force, but you can't be drained of your education and philosophy. We might add religion to these, but in a broad sense, they include it. The person who puts these above money and the grosser considerations of life is protected against many things. He doesn't gravitate into the same kind of relationships that he might otherwise.

We must not forget the ascendent of a chart. For a planet in one chart to be at the ascendent of another one is one of the most important possible factors. If the planet be either Venus or Jupiter, the results are excellent, unless the ascendent itself or the planet involved is badly afflicted.

As we have pointed out elsewhere, Mars-Uranus afflictions between charts can hold possible strains, dangers and broad changes. Mars-- Neptune afflictions can hold the worst in emotional disturbances. Mars- Saturn afflictions are frustrating. Either of the last two combinations can result in ill health. Mars-Neptune, like Saturn Neptune afflictions, can often lead to some form of neuroticism or mental illness, as well as to other forms of ill health, which are probably mental and emotional at their base.

Without going into all the details that we have covered, it is simplification to say that good aspects help a marriage or partnership, while negative aspects hurt it -- all this on the unconscious level. Under any circumstances, creative and intellectual aspects will give you a lift, while insecure and restrictive aspects will drain your vitality and do away with what we might call your divine protection.

It is important to realize that marriage, as we know it, or as the churches know it, is not holy matrimony. It isn't holy when it costs money for a license and to pay the minister to make it acceptable. These are business aspects. The drive-in chapels give the best rates. The big churches are for people in the higher brackets. All ceremonies help marriage to become more of a fetish. There are so many business aspects, wedding gowns, flowers, cocktails, fancy food and all that sort of thing. Rings appeal to the savage and the mercenary qualities in people. A big diamond shows a girl must have gotten something worthwhile. In a pinch she can always hock it for a small part of its cost. Wedding presents, the loot, and a tomb to store it away. People actually seek these things as a part of marriage, and forever after, they have to tie themselves to the people who presented them.

The marriage that is made in heaven is the one that helps folks discover heaven within themselves, beauty within themselves -- the one that helps them to contact the abstract within themselves. When they discover these qualities within themselves they can reproduce them in the outside world. This is no different in process from a partnership of two engineers, where the engineers utilize abstract mathematical principles, abstract natural law and engineering principles and erect a perfectly balanced, well designed and beautiful bridge.

You cannot build a happy and successful marriage on low and gross motives as a foundation. If people understood the higher principles, they would not want to. People do not understand the higher principles. If they did, the marital institution would not be what it is today. Marriage would be too personal a matter to submit to government of social intervention or supervision. Certain groups are allowed to perform marriages. They get paid for it. Put together your own group. Form some new religion, and you can perform marriages. Just become a minister of your own church and you are in business. Somewhat ridiculous, is it not? Isn't a marriage actually too personal a matter to take in all these outsiders? Nevertheless, it has to be done for now. Otherwise, it isn't legal (Saturn). As things stand now, in a great ratio of cases, marriage is a means of a woman gaining support, a solution to her economic problems. This is her way of earning a living. It is an accepted method. If the marriage proves unbearable for both parties, some honest minded women will gladly walk out and ask no further compensation, but a large ratio will want payments indefinitely continued in the form of alimony. In most places, society goes along with this idea because of a purely selfish motive. There is the fear that the woman may become a burden to the state or to society itself. In most states, a judge will grant temporary alimony without listening to any evidential phases of the case. Legal authorities make it plain that this is because of the fear that society itself might have a responsibility to the woman. Community property laws in many states are quite equitable. In some, any profit that has been made since marriage occurred is split equally, and each party is again an individual and on his or her own. Whether going into or out of marriage, the whole thing is put on an economic basis. One of the boring things about marriage, as we know it, is that it is merely a branch of economics.

Let us suppose that you are a lofty spirit wanting to rise in the intellectual and perfectly designed world of the abstract, and let us suppose that you are married, and that you find another member of the opposite sex who can lift you in that new world. You are likely to be suspect. There might be sex up there somewhere. There are apt to be jealousies. If there are no jealousies, society is going to suspect all parties involved. It must be some strange cult like those to be found in deepest Africa. Society condemns what it does not understand, and it understands little. It will have to go back a few thousand years into the deep dark past and consult Moses.

Marriage should bring intellectual benefits to both parties. Otherwise, it may be too much like breeding cattle. When there is no longer mutual intellectual benefit, what is left but frustration and death, the Saturnian variety of death. Is it then unwise to seek the help of Uranus in seeking change? Is this disgraceful? Are we to progress or go retrograde? Are we going on to create a better future, or are we going back, down the backward scale of evolution, maybe down to monkeys or fish? The future holds hope for the creative mind. The past holds frustration. Which way are we going?

Marriage often holds a purpose. Most any human relationship can have a purpose. The purpose of one marriage may be fulfilled in a year. Perhaps another takes a lifetime. When the purpose of a marriage is served, should the remainder of life be taken up with the funeral procession and the mourning? Should the wails echo night after night? Should life be a perpetual funeral? Should it be made up as a salad of frustration? Where there are children, they must be provided for. They must be educated. They should have love and affection. They should be guided, but can these things be successfully accomplished in a home that is a tomb?

Marriage is not the only human relationship. There are business relationships Nobody blames a man for switching jobs, bosses or corporations when he can better himself, although even this was not always the case. A man was once looked upon with suspicion if he changed jobs too often. He wasn't steady or stable. He couldn't stick at one thing. The first question asked was, "Why did you leave your last job?" If you answered that it was because your former boss was a big, unethical pirate you wouldn't have much chance of getting a new job, because no other big, unethical pirate would want to hire you. To be a business man in those days, it was pretty well recognized that you had to be a big, unethical pirate. That isn't so long ago. Forty years would do it. All the big, unethical pirates have not departed yet.

The marriage institution has not been handled like other human relationships, because of the factor of children. This was justifiable. It can't be handled just the same. You can't quit children like you quit a job, although children often do plenty of suffering under the present setup. It is odd that the 5th House, which represents children (Aries) is in opposition to the 11th House, which represents the higher phases of love and friendship (Libra). Yet, the opposition need not be considered as unfavorable. It brings change. We can't have improvement without change. Ultimately, we should be able to deliver from the abstract world a more perfect design for marriage. The present one is quite faulty. We can't find perfection in anything molded to that design because the design is defective.

As an overall policy bent on the improvement of human relationships, we should look for help from Venus, Jupiter, and at times Uranus. Perhaps we should also look to "Z", ruler of Gemini, which we suspect is about 20-Pisces in 1957 and progressing at the approximate rate of a degree in 5.3 years. Our suspicions might be wrong, but we appear to get more and more verification for this suspicion as we continue research on the subject.

Let us repeat something we said at the outset. If you are to solve problems of human relationships, toss the obsolete rules to the dogs and start thinking for yourself. Toss out everything and start from the beginning. What do YOU think? What do you HONESTLY think? Don't be swayed by us any more than you think you should. Don't let Moses do your thinking for you, but don't let us do it either. In so far as astrology is concerned, we think your experience will bear out the astrological conceptions we have presented, but don't stop here. Don't allow our views to become Saturnian crystallization in your mind. Go on from here. Let Uranus, Venus and Jupiter work for you too. Utilize your own God-given intellectual qualities. Improve on our conceptions wherever and whenever you can. We are not like Moses. We are not telling you that this is the word of God. That expression is merely a crutch. The word of God can be misinterpreted and probably always has been, except in the case of those who have discovered beautiful mathematical designs in nature, mental and emotional as well as physical natural laws, for these are truly the word of God.

Two years have elapsed since we began writing this Course, and with this 24th Lesson, we have completed the originally outlined design. We finish at 10:30 PM on September 24th, l957 (Mountain Standard Time). Sun, Mars and the Moon are all in Libra. With the exception of three of the Lessons, they were all written with the Moon in Libra, in order to catch that abstract cosmic design. Jupiter was in Leo when we started, but it is in Libra as we finish.

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