The English writer, JB Priestly was a household name when I was growing up. So, naturally, as a teenager I majestically dismissed him as someone with nothing worth saying. That was until I saw a performance of his play ‘Time and the Conways’  which I went with friends to see in Manchester just before the start of the spring term of our third year at University.

I remember these details precisely because the occasion left its mark, although I had no clue then that the body of ideas which inspired Priestly in the writing of this play were those of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, ideas which were to become central to the development of Transitional Astrology.

Yet it is a quote from Priestly, made later in his life, after he had turned away from esoteric systems, that I am reproducing here. Just as I was organising myself to write an article on this very theme, the book I was reading fell open at this page.

“One thing of which I have always been sure, all my adult life, and that is that in our intellectual interpretations of this vast infinitely complicated universe, we don’t begin to grasp its reality, what it is really like, or what our lives consist of, where they begin and end, and that in sincerely felt personal relationships and the arts alone do we have any glimmering of the Truth of things. I don’t speculate about time anymore: it’s too difficult, at least for my intellect, but I know it hides a mystery, and that within that mystery we may discover that our lives are richer, bigger, and more far reaching than we think, except at certain heightened moments.”

Like Tolkien, and probably all those members of the generation who managed to survive the horror of trench warfare and the institutionalised degradation of serving in the class- ridden British army, Priestly never got over his experiences. They changed him irreversibly, but he never let them deface the knowingness which remained central to his life and work.

As we watch our own societies break down under the weight of unresolvable issues, which have been growing like fungi for decades, the biggest responsibility of those of us who remain committed to the evolution of human consciousness is to keep alive the awareness:  It is not that we can fix the world, because without understanding the purpose of breakdown and destruction we cannot, but that as individuals we could be more than we are.

We have to hold that space because as Proverbs 29 has been reminding every generation since the time of Solomon when the vision dies the people perish.

The peril of the fading of the vision which has supported more conscious living is as old as God, and we confront it as individuals, as members of our generations, our cultures, and our times. It is in our faces now because, collectively, thinking from each of these groupings is pressuring us to turn away from the possibility of being tricked by things which cannot be proved scientifically.  It is a situation which in the present circumstances are like sitting in dust and then pouring it onto your head for good measure in that age-old gesture of despair and defeat.

For those of us on the Third Ray, intellectual schemes, of which Astrology is one, are the closest we are going to get to this elusive higher reality where we can be more than we are. So, we persist within them and, as guides and pointers, share them with others to encourage a productive use of the time of our lives.  This involves making efforts which might take us a few steps towards a higher appreciation of this higher reality, in relation to which our systems are just words on a signpost.  But just a few steps may be enough to improve the quality of our everyday lives and persuade us of the wisdom of keeping going.

Systems, whether religious or esoteric, represent possibility because even if they don’t provide all the answers, they keep alive the knowledge of that higher reality and how we might prepare ourselves to access it.  In time, we must free ourselves from the frames that support us in the early days of journeying, because within them will and creativity will atrophy once not doing becomes our line of least resistance.  Yet by then we may have learned for ourselves how to keep the vision alive through discipline and application and the secret of cooperation with the laws of a living universe which we cannot change.

Nothing under the Sun is free because to pay its way everything has a function to fulfil. We can fulfil our obligation to Life by simply dying, without ever having understood our purpose, and releasing our etheric substance to the devas’ scaffolding yard.   But that does not serve the evolution of consciousness which requires us to live with awareness and offer something to humanity from that place.

I have not defended Astrology as a system at any time in my professional life because there is no case to make, to argue about, or to proselytise about. We cannot be all things to all people and Astrology is not for those seeking mystic union through the emotional self. Yet those for whom the Third Ray is strong in their make-up, will recognise a context which provides a structure, a meaningful goal in the form of recognition of individual purpose, a sense of proportion so often lacking from mystical approaches, and a perspective. Those who cannot make sense of the words on the signpost should seek another kind of help to keep open that place inside through which we can become richer and bigger.

The idea of limitless freedom of the personality is a Western glamour, ever in fashion and ever the posture of the fashionable, which has sabotaged us for countless generations, dismissing religion without understanding the purpose that it serves. Those who have benefitted the most from religion have often been those of us who in chasing freedom, crashed off the road. Then, we came to understand better that religion provides only the ground rules for journeying. The rest we have to find for ourselves in the conscious living of our lives.  Anyway, the religious vision is fading out now in the West, and with or without it, conscious living is the space we must hold to protect the evolution of human consciousness.

Suzanne Rough /DKF-K

September 2024