Towers and Mansions

Exploring Titus Burckhardt’s “Mystical Astrology According to Ibn ‘Arabi” continued:

A comparison between the twelve Towers or the Signs of the Zodiac and the twenty-eight lunar Mansions might be useful for further astrological speculation and experimentation. The mansions are one of the more neglected areas in western astrology. Neil Mann in his web site devoted to W. B. Yeats “A Vision” gives a nice summary:

“The focus (of using the Mansions, ed.) is almost entirely on ‘catarchic’ astrology, that is the selection of propitious times to begin things and, with respect to what is favoured by the Moon’s position in the various Mansions. Abenragel’s list is a summary of Indian and Hellenistic traditions rather than an exposition of Arabian astrology or any ideas of his own. The enterprises involved vary from the important to the trivial, from marriage to when to put on new clothes, and Dorotheos also comments on the outcome of processes started involuntarily under a particular Mansion, such as captivity. Certain enterprises are favoured and others particularly cautioned against depending on the Moon’s position, though, for good fortune in the ventures favoured by a Mansion, the Moon must also be free from bad aspects from other planets … It is interesting that in European adoption the practice seems to have moved away somewhat from the deciding when to start a venture to focus more on magical operations and the making of talismans, although the matters favoured may be similar. This seems more superstitious in some respects, but it also takes the burden off waiting for the appropriate time to do something, as long as the talisman has been made at the right time. The lists here are incidentally a fascinating side-light on the possible pre-occupations of their period, though probably more the time of the original sources, than of ‘Alî ibn abi ’r-Rijal himself, or of the Latin translators. Certain things like when to have a haircut and put on new clothes seem strangely unimportant, while Dorotheos’ terms of reference, in particular, are very much those of a male, slave-owning soldier, in danger of capture.” http://www.yeatsvision.com/Mansions.html

In his “Futuhat Makkiya”, Ibn ‘Arabi devotes the second chapter to the Science of Letters. There he says,

“The science of letters can thus not be looked at independantly of the science of the heavenly bodies or of the cosmic cycle.” (The Meccan Revelations, ed. Michel Chodkiewicz, p.108)

I don’t want to go into any further detail here, as the material is very complex. What should be noted is that each of the Mansions corresponds to one of the letters or the arabian alphabet, which has twenty-eight letters.

As we have seen it is the Sun whose movement helps to “define” the twelve Towers. The Lunar Mansions of course come into differentiation through the movement of the Moon. The beginning is where the Moon crosses the path of the ecliptic, but for all practical purposes the vernal equinox is usually taken as a starting point.

There are two thoughts that you might consider. First, it is possible to integrate the Mansions, astrologically, by taking into account the correspondances given by Ibn ‘Arabi. (There is a table included in “Mystical Astrology according to Ibn ‘Arabi”. It is however very hard to read as the middle of it disappears into the binding. For ease of reading you can refer to the above website, there the table is in a readable tabular form.) And secondly, considering that each Mansion is in a sense a resting place (a station) for the Moon, it is not so far fetched to look closer to the earthly sphere for signification. One shouldn’t forget however, that Ibn ‘Arabi’s “mundane” approach to the letters is in respect to the Divine Names. Each is a doorway or a station to remember (dhikr) God.

The Sky of Fixed Stars and the Sky without Stars

Exploring Titus Burckhardt’s “Mystical Astrology According to Ibn ‘Arabi” continued:

I would like now to address the question of how the constellations in the Sphere of the Fixed Stars are related to the Sky without Stars. Notably the question of the twelve zodiacal constellations and the twelve signs of the zodiac.

The Sky of the Fixed Stars contains not only the constellations but all stars. Viewed as a landscape, the stars are the “population” of this sphere. Each star having its own character. Each group of stars defining the landscape. This imaginative landscape also has a sky, which is the sphere immediately above, the Sky without Stars. The twelve Towers are like beacons whose light encompasses the sphere of Fixed Stars. We have to remember that without the solar cycle there would be no differentiation. The signs are not dependant on whether a constellation moves by precession into another sign. Titus Burckhardt expresses this so,

“We have already shown that the qualitative divisions of the zodiac proceeds from the four constant terms of the solar cycle, the equinoxes and the solstices, and that it is not right to say – as some modern astrologers do – that the Spring Equinox moves from the sign of Aries to the sign of Aquarius, since the signs are counted invariably beginning from the vernal point. On the other hand, one could say that the constellation of Aries is moved towards the sign of Taurus or that the vernal point, that is to say the Spring Equinox, has moved from the constellation of Aries to that of Pisces; and one ought to suppose that the change of the relationship between these two supreme skies, that of the zodiacal ‘towers’ and that of the fixed stars has modified in a certain way that which one could call the ‘influence of the sky’.”

Yet another way to see how the two skys are related is to imagine you are sitting by a pool. The pool is the sky. In its depths shimmer multitudes of lights some brighter, others barely visible. These lights swim together. Standing around the pool are the twelve signs. Their images are reflected on the surface of the pool. It is mid-day and the Sun has reached its zenith. The movement of the groups of lights in the pool needn’t be confined by the reflexions in the water, there are no barriers, they move according to their own law. Now imagine it is midnight and the Moon is shining in its fullness. Instead of the signs the twenty-eight mansions are reflected on the surface of the pool. Towers by day and Mansions by night.

The Sky without Stars (4)

Exploring Titus Burckhardt’s “Mystical Astrology According to Ibn ‘Arabi” continued:

There are many other aspects of the Sky without Stars that could be explored. They can only be gone into sketchily here. What I would like to point your attention to is what Henri Corbin describes as the mundus imaginalis. In his book “Alone with the Alone – Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi” he says the following:

“For them the world is ‘objectively’ and actually threefold: between the universe that can be apprehended by pure intellectual perception (the universe of the Cherubic Intelligences) and the universe perceptible to the senses, there is an intermediate world, the world of the Idea-Images, of archetypal figures, of subtile substances, of ‘immaterial matter’. This world is as real and objective, as consistent and subsistent as the intelligible and sensible worlds; it is an intermediate universe ‘where the spiritual takes body and the the body becomes spiritual,’ a world consisting of real matter and extension, though by comparison to sensible, corruptible matter these are subtile and immaterial. The organ of this universe is the active Imagination…”

Quoted in the same book is a passage out of his “The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism”,

“Between the world of pure spiritual Lights (luces victoriales, the world of the ‘Mothers’ in the terminology of Ishraq) and the sensory universe, at the boundary of the ninth Sphere [the Sky without Stars – th.] … there opens a mundus imaginalis which is a concrete spiritual world of archetype-Figures, apparitional Forms … vision of it in actuality is vouchsafed to the visionary apperception of the Active Imagination.”

The signs of the zodiac as archetype-figures belong in this realm. They are concrete forms only accessible to Active Imagination. So the mode of perception of the ancient astrologer is at this level and not in the rationalist mode of our times! The rationalist mode is bound to the sensible world. That is why it is so difficult for most modern astrologers, and that goes also for those with a traditional bent, to transcend a conceptual view of the universe where one considers the planetary bodies alone – without any consideration of the Spheres. Of course once the Active Imagination has perceived this realm and expressed this perception in language it is also available to ratio. Most of the astrology you have learned, dear reader, has been through the ratio (this also applies to me). If we really want to understand astrology we are challenged to activate our Active Imagination. Even the briefest of glimpses is enough to change how we “see” astrology and practice it.

PS Here is a link to an essay by Henri Corbin on the mundus imaginalis http://www.hermetic.com/bey/mundus_imaginalis.htm

The Sky without Stars (3)

Exploring Titus Burckhardt’s “Mystical Astrology According to Ibn ‘Arabi” continued:

Other than using a blank sheet of paper, the closest we can come to representing the undifferentiated signs of the zodiac astrologically is to use a circle without the glyphs of the signs. As there are no divisions, the signs cannot be placed. Thus we have an horoscope that looks thus:

What we are really representing is the ecliptic. The divisions into the signs is determined solely by the movement of the Sun on the ecliptic. Here we have “junction”. Titus Burckhardt formulates it this way:
“…it is the Sun which by its movements actualises or measures the virtual determinations of the zodiacal sky of the archetypes, because without the fixed points of the solar cycle the directions of the sky without stars would be undefinable.”

The first two junctions are defined by the Sun crossing the ecliptic at the equinoxes. The next two junctions by the solstices. Our horoscope now looks like this:

PS: A diagramme has been added to the last posting to help visualize pulling a corner of a geometrical figure to infinity.

The Sky without Stars (2)

Exploring Titus Burckhardt’s “Mystical Astrology According to Ibn ‘Arabi” continued:

We have discussed the expansion and contraction of the planetary spheres from a metaphysical standpoint. It is also possible to approach the sky without stars from a geometrical standpoint. This will be useful as we will later be looking more closely at number and space. To say that the towers or signs of the zodiac are undifferentiated and at the same time differentiated from one another seems a contradiction. But this is exactly what they are.

Place two geometrical figures before your mind’s eye. The first is a triangle, which we will later see is very closely connected with the directive qualities of the signs (cardinal, fixed and mutable). The second figure is a square, which is closely connected to another spatial quality, the elementary (hot, cold, moist and dry). If each of these forms enclose the same area they are quantitatively equivelant but qualitatively unique. One form cannot be confused with another, they are differentiated and well defined. Now imagine that the corners of each of these figures extend into infinity. What happens? Their uniqueness becomes indefinite, they both merge into unity.

The towers or the signs of the zodiac “behave” in a similar way. They are at once definite and indefinite. The directive or elemental qualities are unified, only through their activation do they become revealed or manifest.

I think it should be clear now that the origin of the twelve signs of the zodiac is other than generally thought. It is a common (mis-)understanding that the signs, as accepted now by consensus, are the cumulative product of the mythical consciousness of overly imaginative nomads who looked up at the sky millenia ago…

But the signs are not derivatives of the constellations. They are not even visible. On the contrary, we may have to explore whether the constellations, all 88+ of them, have their source in the sky without stars.*

* This opens a whole arena of questions, such as, “How then are all of the constellations in the sky of the fixed stars related to the twelve towers in the sky without stars?” or, “Why aren’t there 88 towers?” This will of course have to be attended to in a later essay dealing with the sky of the fixed stars. For the moment let us say that the number twelve is not a chance happening.