Click on to order Marc Edmund Jones' book on the Sabian Symbols
The Sabian Symbols in Astrology
by Marc Edmund Jones


Always round off a zodiacal degree to the next whole number when using its Sabian Symbol. For instance, the Sabian Symbol for both 23º01' and 23º59' Leo is 24 Leo. 23º00' is 23 Leo.
 
Click on images to order.
Click on to order Rudhyar interpretation of the Sabian Symbols An Astrological Mandala
by Dane Rudhyar
Click on to order this truly informative volume on astrology's foundation
Astrology
How and Why It Works

by Marc Edmund Jones
Click on to order Rudhyar's first book on astrology
The Astrology of Personality
by Dane Rudhyar
Click to order the great book that introduced horoscope wholeview or gestalt A Guide to Horoscope Interpretation
by Marc Edmund Jones
Click on to order
The Collected Poems
of W. B. Yeats

edited by Richard J. Finneran

"An astrological twig grafted onto the tree by Rudhyar, bent and shaped by MEJ-Sabian winds, pruned and nurtured by the astrological cycles, watered by the Ganges, sustained by the Primeval Being, ever lifting hopeful hands to the spiritual sky." GAVIN K. McCLUNG did graduate work in European intellectual history, and started writing about astrology for publication in the Seventies. Visit his web site at www.hyperionseries.com



CyberWorld Khaldea is pleased to offer its visitors this timeless piece on the two great pioneers of Modern Astrology


Rudhyar and Jones
A Saturnian Proclamation
by Gavin K. McClung


It is a pivotal, not to say epochal, moment in time when the tenets of humanistic and transpersonal astrology are again being fully propounded throughout the world of astrology at large. The time to do this is right, and the time is now. This is written by one who has recently experienced a personal facet of the great concept of Cycle, about which Dane Rudhyar has spoken so often and so appealingly to those who knew or know him through his books and lectures, or through the illuminative personal encounter that can happen from time to time.
      The second return of Saturn is indeed a valuable developmental milestone for anyone who may be so fortunately informed as to be aware of its presence on their personal lifetime-line (or life-timeline). The essential meaning is far greater than any single example or explanation of it can convey. Yet it can be said that at the "third Saturn" (second return) there occurs for an individual a juncture where he or she may correctly see or say in truth: "Now I have evolved from being a very old, perhaps even decrepit :), middle-aged person — and have advanced upon the wheel of life to become now a fresh, young, new-born or reborn infant old-aged person!" The writer, who has experienced this, confirms that it's great to be so young again.
      So be it for some new gray hair; so be it for a touch of arthritic symptom from time to time; and so be it for the occasional surprising "touch of wisdom" that may somehow appear on one's personal horizon now and again. There are surprising benefits. Perhaps some part of this affect may even become capable of expression at some level useful to others. We can hope so, at least — just as there was hope in hearing Marc Edmund Jones (Saturn in the MC degree) say fervently and with orotund volume, "Saturn is my absolute favorite planet to work with!"
      At a time when almost everything appears to have taken on an intriguing, even hypnotizing sheen of "newness" while civilization and human society speed toward the unknown or merely as yet unappreciated frontiers that lie beyond the superficially-recognized millennial boundary that is known to the Western mind as 2001 — at such a time, all possible rational contact with the living human past of the world has increasing value for everyone, if only because of its radical attention-getting "oldness" (read oddness?), or even its transiently romantic antiquity, or its experiential utility as cultural anchorage that can speak to us most valuably in the here and now of the why for which we do not yet know. Without the Old, there can be no New . . .
      As a "new" astrologer, I was fortunate, as were numerous others, to have words of personal conversation with Dane Rudhyar and Marc Edmund Jones both at the same astrological conference, once upon a time, now long ago. At that time, both of these men were well and truly into the old-age phase of their old-age (3rd) Saturn cycles. Jones in that day could lightly joke from the public platform: "I've noticed in recent years a lot of attention being given to 'how to grow old gracefully', but I've decided that I'm more interested in 'how to grow disgracefully old!'" Many, of course, recognized that he was actively doing both — successfully getting to be very old and making a graceful adventure of doing so.  
 
 

      Between these two great personal friends and public figures, Dane Rudhyar and Marc Edmund Jones, there was and is a type of contrastive style and content of thinking that is yet in many ways almost reflexively identical in substance. There is astrological value, I believe, in considering that the Arian (Sagittarius-rising) Rudhyar has the Moon in Aquarius, while the Libran (Scorpio-rising) Jones has the Moon in Leo. Purposive and deeply vital spiritual exchange is perhaps the key insight for the intimate awareness-factors existing between them, perhaps, almost, a yang-yin reflection happening there.  
 

   
 
It is key also to consider that Jones valued Rudhyar's work so well as to grant the requested permission to him to give the astrological world its first public exposure to the Sabian symbols, which appeared in Rudhyar's seminal book, The Astrology Of Personality (1936). This happened nearly twenty years before Jones published his own work on the subject of The Sabian Symbols In Astrology (1953). Later, of course, Rudhyar produced another book of broad significance as well, with his free-wheeling and poetically intense recension of the Sabian symbols as a multi-phasic cycle of transformation in An Astrological Mandala (1973). (In passing, it may clarify somewhat to suggest that to refer to "the Sabian symbols" simply as "the Sabians" is probably insufficient, as the phrase, "the Sabians", actually indicates an ancient Middle-Eastern people, who have their own specific identity or place in history.)
      After the discovery and recording of that highly-regarded set of degree-symbols by Marc Edmund Jones and Elsie Wheeler in a single day at Balboa Park, San Diego, California, 1925 — between then and now and for all future times, it is important to recognize that Rudhyar was the only person accorded such open recognition of merit by a co-equal worker in the field. Other writings about the Symbols have appeared, and more may appear later, but none will have or can have the same pre-eminence as the source works of Rudhyar and Jones, Jones and Rudhyar. Given the fact that Jones himself considered the Sabian symbols work to be a highly significant feature in any evaluation of his own contribution as a whole, this speaks volumes as to the high regard of Jones for Rudhyar. At the NASO Astrology Conference in Atlanta in 1979, Dr. Jones addressed a rousing keynote encomium to Rudhyar, calling him the grand "chevalier" or gallant knight of contemporary astrology. Rudhyar in turn dedicated his very special work on zodiacal cycle, The Pulse Of Life, to his friend Marc Edmund Jones.
      As a personal helper to Marc Edmund Jones at a number of astrological conferences in the Seventies, and perhaps by virtue of having contributed at least marginally to several of the books he published during that period, it was a forever-valued experience for me also to have spent time with him following his 90th birthday, at his home north of Seattle, Washington.
      At dinner during that seemingly timeless time-period, the question was posed to Dr. Jones: "How would you compare your work and that of Dane Rudhyar?" His response was not recorded in detail, but one rather specific and quite accurate quotation is this: "Rudhyar is a metaphysician. I am a clinician." It was readily apparent that the terms used in this reference were not intended to be taken as defined in either academic philosophy or clinical psychology. Somewhat so, but not quite so. What MEJ meant to indicate was that a great deal of attention in his own work in the field had been purposely bent toward developing practical yet esoteric applications of astrological/philosophical insights that are intended to have high use or advantage in very immediate situations of counseling. I gathered that, from his point-of-view, the work of Rudhyar was most significant because of Rudhyar's capacity for success through informing or even illuminating astrology and the philosophy of astrology with a panoramic and inspiring vision of universal unity — as perhaps exemplified by the transformational energies that may open up to mind and spirit through rational and idealistic contemplation of Cycle and Wholeness per se.
      Rudhyar, in a work dedicated to Jones (The Pulse Of Life), made singular and affecting use of this vast Explanation for human life that avails itself to us through correct awareness of humanistic and transpersonal Cycle and Wholeness. Jones, in his public and private comments clearly affirmed his own view of the reflexive and intimate nature of the relationship or awareness that existed, and still exists, between of these two great thinkers and teachers of this late and onward-passing century.
      There comes to mind with these closing lines a wonderful and, yes, rather Saturnian image from a universally-living poem by William Butler Yeats, entitled "Lapis Lazuli" (a Saturnian stone). I quote some verses from this poem to honor two eminent astrological elders of the 20th century, who, when still among us, offered to all people abundant uses for the wisdom-logic and dynamic-idealism of their lifelong search for rational insights into life as lived within the universe of man and woman and within the esoteric World made for ourselves.
"...Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in lapis lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird,
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instrument.
 
Every discoloration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent,
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay."
 
        [For HYPERION]


Read Part Two

Learn more about Marc Edmund Jones and
the Sabian Assembly.

Gavin Kent McClung originated the Hyperion Series astrological degree symbols

© Copyright 2000 by Gavin K. McClung. All rights reserved.


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