Were You Born under a Lucky Star?

Into the Heavens, Night after Night

Have you ever looked through a Kaleidoscope at the patterns formed there by the many little pieces of varicolored glass, and notice how the slightest disturbance of the position changes the pattern? Also, do you realize that it would be impossible, or almost so, to duplicate any pattern, no matter how much you were to turn; there is such a variety of effect. Similarly when you look into the heavens, night after night, you will notice changes among the planets. In fact such is the variety of changes that occur among them that it would be impossible to duplicate the position that they hold relatively to one another while you are reading this, for almost twenty six thousand years. Thus in the planetary kaleidoscope there is, we might say, an infinity of patterns. When we realize that human beings are entering the world constantly and that each being is stamped at the first complete breath with the planetary pattern in the sky, everyone must be different from everyone else.

Nor should this statement about stellar influence create doubt when we consider that wireless saves of different lengths and different pitch sent out from tiny man made contrivance can make themselves felt and can register by mechanical operations involving expenditure of energy thousands of mile from their source. The planetary vibrations from those great orbs in the heavens makes them felt millions of miles away as surely, as easily, and with equal uncertainty. We know that the angle of the solar ray determines whether it is winter or summer.

We also know the effect of the Moon upon the waters, and it is within the experience of all that we feel more buoyant when the atmosphere is clear and dry than when it is moist and murky. And what determines these atmospheric conditions but the planets, the circling stars.

When we look up at this planetary kaleidoscope from time to time, we see in the heavens various configurations which are pronounced lucky or unlucky according to whether they are formed between so- called benefices alone, such as Venus, Jupiter and the Sun, or planets said to be malefic such as Saturn, Mars or Uranus. When Jupiter and Venus are in close conjunction near the mid-heaven, it is a foregone conclusion that those who come into the world under this configuration will enjoy a measure of good fortune far above the average, and such persons would therefore be considered “lucky” in the extreme. On the other hand there are times when Saturn and Mars occupy the zenith position for souls that are born to suffer.

But why should one suffer and another be born under a lucky star? Why do the stars give good fortune to one and misfortune to others, and if we are born to “luck,” whether good or bad, what is the use or where is the incentive to individual effort? If there is a law of nature which is established beyond doubt it is surely the law of “Cause and Effect.” Every cause must produce an adequate effect and nothing which we see as an effect can be without a pre-existence cause. Moreover, if this is a universal law it must apply to the conditions of birth as well as to subsequent life. Following up this idea the next question is: if our birth is under a lucky or unlucky star. Thus by indication of belief in a previous existence as well as in future lives, for while we are now reaping in our horoscopes the effects of our past lives we are also by our acts laying the foundations for a new horoscope which can only be worked out in future life.

“How closely luck is linked to merit, does never to the fool occur; had he the wise man’s stone, I swear it, the stone had no philosopher” said Mephisto sarcastically in “Faust” and it is true. If we are born under a lucky star it shows that we have earned good fortune thereby indicated, by forethought, kindness, and our other virtues expressed in previous lives, for we cannot have friends unless we are friendly ourselves. If we happen to have Saturn and Mars instead of Venus and Jupiter near Zenith, it shows that in the past we ourselves have not been kindly and friendly or we could not now express the opposite traits. But this is just the point where the study of Astrology should help us. It shows our limitations for the present and it points out the obvious remedies and how to build for the future. Can the leopard change its skin? No. Can the Lion cease to pray? Absolutely impossible. Can the flower cease to bloom or the mineral cease to crystallize? Certainly not; because they are under the law which are unchangeable as the laws of Medes and Persians. They have neither choice nor prerogative but must obey the dictates of the group spirit which guides them along the path of their evolution. But in this respect we differ radically from those lower kingdoms, we have both choice and prerogative.

We may do whatsoever we will and that is a factor which is never shown in the horoscope, a factor that may be made to play an all important role in every life. It is not enough to be born under a lucky star to have a lucky life, for the horoscope shows only the tendencies and the person who is well endowed will without question have an abundance of opportunities to make his life fortunate in the very highest degree. But only in so far as he exerts himself to grasp opportunity on the wing, will that which foreshadowed in his horoscope come to pass. And similarly with the person who is afflicted by the conjunction of two male ficus in the mid-heaven or anywhere else in the horoscope. By his will, and the exercise of choice, which are his divine birthrights, he may rule his stars and make of the unlucky horoscope a fruitful life from a higher standpoint than the other. The bark that has been tossed by the tempest harbors a job when heaven of safety is reached that is not equaled on the ship that has always said on smiling seas.

“Who never ate his bread in sorrow, who never passed the midnight hours weeping, waiting for the morrow, He knows not yet Ye heavenly powers.”

Max Heindel

From the higher standpoint those who are living in the lap of luxury are to be pitied when their lucky stars give them all the good things of this world and cause them to forget that there are stewards and that the day is coming when their souls shall be required of them with an accounts of their stewardship. They shall then be forced to confess that they have failed to use the substance entrusted to them in the proper manner; while others under the strain and stress of life, expressed by the horoscopical squares and oppositions, have wrung from their unlucky stars a measure of victory. What wonder then if the king’s messengers, the circling stars, take from the unfaithful steward that which we had and give to the other, changing the latter’s adversity to prosperity in later lives. Thus the pendulum of luck and loss, success and failure swings through many lives till we learn to make our own “luck” by ruling our stars.

“A god can love without cessation, but under laws of alteration We mortals need, in changing measure, Our share of pain as well as pleasure.”

Max Heindel

And in this necessity for changes that is ministered unto us by the circling stars which form configurations that we call good or evil, though they are neither from a higher standpoint; for no matter how good the horoscope, by the progression of the stars evil configurations are sure to come and no matter how evil, there are always new opportunities for good given by aspects of the Sun, Venus, and Jupiter to our planets at birth. All that we have to do is to grasp the opportunity, and help our stars, that our stars may help us.