[PAGE 462] THE MESSAGE OF THE STARS
CHAPTER XXII
PROGRESSION OF THE HOROSCOPE
FATE OR FREE WILL
When a chain is subjected to strain, imperfections in any of its links
become manifest, and the weakest link will break first. Similarly, in the
case of the body, there are certain inherent weak points and these are indi-
cated in the horoscope. From the moment of birth we subject the body to a
constant strain, and in time the weakness of the various points becomes
manifest as disease. The movement of the planets after birth measures the
time when any particular link is liable to break. This motion of the plan-
ets in the horoscope is called "Progression." Study and practice of medical
Astrology require knowledge of how to progress the planets in the horoscope,
and we shall therefore take up that subject in connection with the message
of the stars relative to disease.
When the Sun rises in the East the day is young and the labors allotted
to each are still before us. Gradually the Sun progresses across the arched
vault of the heavens, and mark the time set for the performance of our
various duties, for keeping our appointments, for taking nourishment, rest
and recreation, and when it has run it course through the day and has ceased
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to illuminate our sphere of action, its absence invites sleep until the dawn
of a new day shall present opportunities for continuation of the activities
left in abeyance from the previous day. If the Sun remained stationary at
any certain point of the sky it would not serve as a time marker but as it
is, all events of our lives are fixed by its progression.
The horoscope is a chart of the heavens for the time when the mystic Sun
of Life rises and awakes us from the long sleep between two lives, then we
are born in the physical world, to continue the labors of a previous life,
to keep the appointment there made with friend or foe; to reap the joy or
bear the sorrow which is the fruitage of our former existence on earth; and
as the progression of the sun marks the changing time of day and year, as it
ushers in season after season in orderly sequence and changes the appearance
of the Great World, the Macrocosm, so progression of the horoscope will cul-
minate in events; it measures the periods of prosperity and adversity; it
warns of impending temptation and tells from what quarter it will come, thus
aiding us to escape if we will but listen to its warning. The natal horo-
scope shows unerringly weak points in our character or constitution, but the
progressed horoscope indicates when previous indulgence of harmful habits is
scheduled to bring sorrow or sickness; it tells truthfully when crises
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culminate; thus it warns us to be on the alert at critical moments, and for-
tifies us in the darkest hour of calamity, with hope of surcease of sorrow
and sickness at a definite time, hence the importance of knowing how to
progress the horoscope.
But, some may say, if all is thus foreshown, it argues an inexorable des-
tiny decreed by divine caprice; what use is there then of striving, or know-
ing; let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. If we were born
into this life on earth for the first and only time, to live here for a
while and then pass away from this sphere never to return, fate and favorit-
ism independent of justice would seem to rule. Such cannot be the case; in
a world where everything else is governed by law, human existence must also
be reducible to a system, and we hold that a reasonable solution of the mys-
tery of life is given by the Twin Laws of Being, the Law of Rebirth and the
Law of Causation.
That which has a beginning must have an end, and conversely, that which
is without ending can never have had a beginning. If the human spirit is
immortal and cannot die, neither can it be born; if it will live to all
eternity, it must have lived from eternity, there is no escape from this
truth; pre-existence must be accepted if immortality is a fact in nature.
In this world there is no law more plainly observable than the law of al-
ternating cycles, which decrees succession of ebb and flow, day and night,
summer and winter, waking and sleeping. Under the same law man's life is
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lived alternatively in the physical world where he sows seeds of action and
gains experiences according to his horoscope. These, the fruits of exist-
ence here, are later assimilated as soul powers in the spiritual world,;
birth and death are thus nothing more than gateways from one phase of man's
life to another, and the life we now live is but one of a series. The dif-
ferences of character, nobility or brutality, moral strength or weakness,
possession of high ideals or low instincts, etc., are certain signatures of
soul power or soul poverty. Finer faculties are the glorious garments of
gentle souls wrought through many lives in the crucible of concrete exist-
ence by trial and temptation. They shine with a luster which illuminates
the way and makes it easier for others to follow. Coarseness of calibre
proclaims the young in Life's School, but repeated existences here will in
due time smoothe the rough corners, mellow and makes them soulful also.
The horoscope shows this difference in the texture of the soul and the
aspects indicate how the soul is ripened by the kaleidoscopic configurations
of planets in progression, which fan the fires in the furnace of affliction
to cleanse and purify the soul of blemish, or brighten the crown of virtue
when victory is won, but though the planets show the tendencies most accu-
rately there is one indeterminable factor which is not shown, a veritable
astrological "x,"--THE WILL POWER OF THE MAN, and upon that rock astro-
logical predictions are ever liable to founder; that, at times, is the
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Waterloo of even the most careful and competent astrologer, yet the very
failure of well-founded predictions is the blessed assurance that we are not
fated to do thus and so because our horoscope shows that at a certain time
the stellar rays impel us in a given direction. In the final analysis we
are the arbiters of our destiny, and it is significant, that while it is
possible to predict for the great majority of mankind with absolute cer-
tainty that the prediction will be vindicated, because they drift along the
sea of life directed by the current of circumstance, predictions fro the
striving idealist fail in proportion to this spiritual attainment of will
power which rouses him to self assertion and resistance of wrong.
A beautiful little poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox gives the idea in a most
pleasing form:
"One ship sails East and another sails West,
With the selfsame winds that blow;
'Tis the set of the sail
And not the gale
That determines the way they go.
"Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As we voyage along through Life;
'Tis the act of the soul
That determines the goal'
And not the calm or the strife."
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