Introducing The DK Foundation

Executive members: 

UK             

The concern of the D.K. Foundation is not simply the transmission of astrological knowledge but also with the application of that knowledge in the circumstances of everyday life, in order to bring about a change in the being of those involved. What we stand for, therefore, is transformation; what we offer are the means and methods of self-knowledge. 

In terms of function, this represents nothing that is new: self-knowledge and transformation are ever the concern of mature spiritual organisations; the means, astrology, is amongst the oldest of disciplines; and the methods of creating self-awareness employed by the Foundation include nothing that has not been used countless times before in schools committed to personal development. 

In terms of teaching, however, the Foundation is offering an approach which, for many people, will represent something new. Our approach is to find, through the application of consciousness, transformative opportunities in the life that each of us is living. Our aim is to help spiritually aware people to achieve soul-personality alignment and to become agents in the process of invoking spiritual will. We are bringing transformation into everyday life rather than encouraging an abandonment of the everyday in order to find spirituality. 

To this end we use both the language of conventional astrology and also the language of  esoteric astrology, as D.K. used that term, meaning pertaining to the soul. 

True esoteric astrology uses a different system of planetary rulerships from that used in conventional, personality-centred astrology. It also acknowledges planets that have not found their way into conventional usage and replaces the house system with the system of crosses.

True esoteric astrology does not deal with personality consciousness and is therefore of only limited to use to people mired  in and confused by personality problems. As this kind of suffering and confusion are the very things that make people turn to astrology for guidance, we continue to use the language of conventional astrology but within a conceptual structure that enables the astrologer to ascertain the purpose behind the personality and to view the overshadowing soul through the window of the personality.

We call this approach Transitional Astrology and it is based upon five concepts:

Each of these concepts is examined on this web site under the heading Key Concepts.

This structure is applied to all teaching and all readings given by the D.K. Foundation.

Each year, in addition to postal work, the D.K. Foundation gives approximately new 200 face-to-face- readings. This way of working ensures that an astrologer remains in touch with what that struggle means in the lives of contemporary westerners.

The Legacy

Phase One: Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Movement

Theme: The Universe as a Phenomenon

Nature: Invocation

Circumstances: Born out the challenge issued by natural science

Message: All is energy

Madame Helena Blavatsky was Russian aristocrat born in 1831. She spent the early years of her life adventuring abroad. Eventually, after visiting India, her travels began to assume the shape of a spiritual quest and she went to Tibet to study the Eastern Esoteric Tradition with the lamas. 

Her middle years found her in the USA where she joined forces with Captain Olcott and established the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875.  Dismissive of God and established Christianity alike, the real bête noire of Madame Blavatsky was the natural scientists whose star was in the ascendant by the close of the nineteenth century, and whose arrogance and blindness, she considered, was bringing about a new Dark Age of materialism. 

By sheer force of will, Madame Blavatsky invoked  a higher level to help her to rise to the challenge posed by science, and from this higher level, in response to her call emerged the masters. 

Master Kuthumi (K.H.) became Madame Blavatsky’s principal source of guidance and between the two of them they produced a body of work, comprising Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine, that represented the occultist’s answer to the scientist.

Master K.H. may have added breadth to her vision but the prose style surely is pure (Sun in Leo, Mars in the third house) Blavatsky. For all its erudition, scorn and bombast, it is unlikely these writings dented the confidence of many contemporary scientists who surely availed themselves of the simple expedient of not reading them. But what they did was bequeath to posterity an alternative to the scientific materialism: a hylozoic universe, a multitude of different levels of consciousness and densities, where everything existed in its own right and was at the same time part of something else. And they ensured that, through the masters, this higher level of intelligence disposed to help humanity would remain accessible to those in incarnation.

The Theosophical Movement took root at a time of confidence in the western world, a time when educated people believed in progress and believed that they were the agents of progress. It was an attempt -  and a very successful attempt - to wrest the idea of  evolution and objectivity from the scientists in order to create Aquarian Age spirituality.

By the time Alice Bailey was taking down D.K’s words, however, Europe was reeling and it was time for a new spiritual message.

Phase Two: The Alice Bailey volumes

Theme: Responding to the Soul

Nature: Evocation

Circumstances: A call to a generation to rise above adversity and despondency

Message: Hold Steady

The Bailey books were written for the generation born after the Great War, who were heading into the Second World War, and to whom would fall the task of global reconstruction after the that war. This was the generation who had also witnessed the Theosophical Movement in disarray after several internal scandals and, most importantly, the withdrawal of Krishnamurti.

The message to this generation, delivered through the Bailey books and through the Arcane School which Alice Bailey established, was to hold steady and rise above adversity by detaching from form, understanding progress as a spiritual process, and becoming responsive to the requirements of the soul. 

Acknowledging the work done by Madame Blavatsky, the Bailey books continue the occult education. Born in 1880, a Gemini with her Mars tucked away in the twelfth house, Alice Bailey was a much quieter personality than the flamboyant, pugilistic Madame Blavatsky, but the Bailey books are under the same ‘impress’ (D.K.’s term) as those of Madame Blavatsky and K.H. Not all the Bailey books are dictated works, certain titles are her own efforts, but the majority of the nineteen volumes is the fruit of the amazing partnership between Alice Bailey and D.K.

The Bailey books and the Arcane School still fulfill the function of providing a sound occult education but it is important to acknowledge that time moves us all on. Once again it is time for a new spiritual message.

Phase Three:  Coming down to earth

Theme: Bringing through spiritual will 

Nature: Invocation

Circumstance: Finding a purpose for well developed personalities

Message: Ground the knowledge

This  is where the D.K. Foundation and its approach to astrology comes in. It is too early to say as yet through what other organisational forms this message will be issued but the ideas have been released on to the mental plane and they are being picked up with an astonishing rapidity. The message they are spelling out is that it is time for self-realisation and for gaining understanding through grounding the knowledge that has been given in the past one hundred and twenty years. And the way to do that is through making a  practical contribution and not simply keeping the knowledge in our heads.

Once again the Masters K.H. and D.K. are supervising and Master Morya is also directly involved.

As the twenty-first century comes in, we face, once again, serious disruption of our western societies as the Twenty-First century comes in. It has to be this way; nothing has gone wrong. It is a time of huge need amongst all the kingdoms of nature. This very fact makes it a time of  great opportunity.

D.K. defined service as recognising a need and knowing how to go about meeting it. This is now a working definition for an approach to spirituality that is based on being proactive. We have to organise ourselves on the physical level to make the best contribution that we know how, from where we stand, and to learn, as Madame Blavatsky did, how to ask for help and to bring through the answer.

The Dalai Lama’s response to the events of September 11th include the following words:

Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience in your own life, and in the world. Then see if there is another for whom you may be the source of that. If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another. If you wish to know that you are safe, cause [others] to know that they are safe. If you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things, help another to better understand. If you wish to heal your own sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of another. Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for love.

This is how spiritual will in brought through. And with this development, the masters' three stage strategy will be brought to completion because it is the way of esotericism to work from the general to the particular.

Addendum

When the DK foundation was set up in 1998, the world of spirituality was, in some respects, a more innocent place than it is now. It was more innocent inasmuch as awareness of the events that we now call 2012 was not actively being encouraged by the Hierarchy. 

People often write in to ask why this was so. The answer quite simply is that the time for this focus was not yet. There were other things to be encouraged in order to promote the restoration of a world needing to get its breath after the two devastating world wars less than twenty-five years apart. The second half of the twentieth century was a time and an opportunity for increasing understanding of the Scheme in which we all take our place; it was also a time for healing and self-development. “To everything there is a season.”

In Esoteric Astrology DK writes of the period of relative peace and stability under the influence of Libra which brought the twentieth century to a close. What was in Libra to make it the dominating, conditioning influence? DK does not specify. 

The conscious human state was in Libra which, as those who understand the esoteric significance of this sign will know, is a place of balance and equilibrium. It is the place where the wheel of consciousness is reversed, the interval between two transformative processes: one, the world wars, instigated by man from the level of personality; the other, 2012, instigated by the planet and expressive of its purpose.

Whether the time and opportunity provided by the second half of the twentieth century were well used is not our concern here. The fact is that we are now in a new century, and it is time to raise awareness about 2012, trusting that the work done in the second half of the twentieth century will contribute to a more positive and understanding response than would have been the case fifty years earlier when the human spirit was still crushed and demoralised by the years and experiences of war.

Those who claim that DK has never mentioned 2012 have not picked up on the allusions and inferences. Was it simply to help us understand what has been that he talked so extensively through Alice Bailey about Solar and Planetary purpose? Might it not also have been to prepare us for what has to come?

In 2004 KH approached the DK Foundation and requested our involvement with the Red Letters project. 

This undertaking has changed a great deal for us as an organisation. Like the cuckoo in the nest it has taken over. This is how it has to be.

There are web site visitors who are taking careful note of the information being made available and who are supportive of the project. There are, of course, others who do not like this turn of events or the message of the Red Letters. That is how it is and how it will remain. Different people are designed to handle different kinds of knowledge. 

The DK Foundation was set up as an initiate school to train responsible agents useful to the Hierarchy. An initiate does not need to be given hope and things that inspire him, for he knows how to find it in the outworking of processes.

Our service work now takes the form of raising awareness about 2012. The task undertaken is to inform and encourage conscious choice, not to persuade or evangelise. 
The DK Foundation still gives readings and still teaches astrology because we ourselves use astrology in all aspects of our work. Our plans to establish an educational community in Lapland proceed.

In every respect these activities are a logical extension of our commitment to this phase of the teaching which has as its theme: Bringing through Spiritual Will, and as its instruction: Ground the Knowledge.

DK has recently said that showing the way by example is now the most effective form of teaching. 

Suzanne Rough
July 2006