The Biological Level of Interpretation

The need for air to breathe, food, some kind of physical exercise or 'play', relative security from destruction by predators or natural forces (extreme cold or heat, storms, floods), and for the satisfaction of the sexual instinct guaranteeing the preservation of the species imperatively require satisfaction. Primitive men and women pass most of every day trying to satisfy their hunger and insure at least a degree of security and comfort for themselves and their immediate family. Directly or indirectly, even modern men and women are often mainly, and in many instances almost exclusively, occupied with the satisfaction of these essential needs, albeit in quite a different way from their primitive ancestors. The rhythms and demands of biology are the foundations of human existence, activity and consciousness; yet in order for human beings to operate at 'higher' levels, these needs have to be brought under control or temporarily curtailed. When attempts to control them are made and even more, when their satisfaction is opposed for `higher' purposes called spiritual (at whatever level of consciousness this ambiguous qualificative is interpreted)tensions, perhaps illness, and collective as well as personal problems are produced. Solutions to such types of problems have often to be found at a strictly biological level. Medical care, diet, a different occupation or way of life, physical exercise, and/or other strictly biological changes even if they require changes also at the family, social, or business levels may be imperative.

In human beings living in a modern, individualistic society, however, biological problems are very often (perhaps in most cases) by-products of tensions, frustrations, and ineffective activity at super-biological levels. An exclusively and strictly biological situation is rarely found. But in ancient types of tribal societies, astrology was never called upon to solve the problems of human beings as individuals. Even when larger kingdoms were formed and a horoscope was cast for the king, what was considered was the beginning of the king's reign-his accession to the throne, a matter affecting the whole kingdom-rather than the birth chart of the king as a person. Even if the king's character and what might be seen in his 'destiny' were studied, it was only to the extent that these factors affected his reign and the nature of his rule.

I have discussed elsewhere in some detail the implications of the fact that the astrology of tribal societies was 'locality centered'. Astrology then dealt with the visible motions of Sun, Moon, stars, and planets from east to west in a sky strictly contained within the circle of the local horizon. The Earth was considered flat and the sky an immense and mysterious dome over the horizon bounded soil in which the tribe was almost ineradicably rooted. The three basic repetitive sky experiences of human beings were the alternation of days and nights, the cycle of seasonal changes, and the puzzling monthly changes in the shape of the Moon. The Sun was the Light of the Day; the Moon, the Light of the Night. These two 'Lights' (only much later were the Sun and Moon spoken of as 'planets' by astrologers) were the foundation of a strictly biological type of astrology.

The motions of the Lights could not only be related to experienced changes on the Earth's surface daily, monthly, and seasonal they could also be defined and eventually plotted out and measured by the way they seemed to affect the rising and setting of the most brilliant stars primarily what was called their 'heliacal rising', and also their visible culmination at the zenith at 'midnight'.

In other words, seasonal changes were seen to be related to the relationship between the disappearance after sunset and reappearance before sunrise of certain brilliant stars, owing to their conjunctions with the Sun. This most likely led to the idea of a solar zodiac, while the passage of the Moon during the night through distinctive patterns of stars defined a lunar zodiac. It is probable that the lunar zodiac came first, at a time or in regions where matriarchy was the prevailing basis for tribal organization. The solar zodiac eventually became the dominant factor, together with the patriarchal type of society. Patriarchy presumably imposed itself as a system of organization when agriculture had to become individualized and regulated, and the growth of neighboring tribes made a struggle for more 'living space' and warfare an apparent necessity of human life.