01/06/2020
TALK ABOUT ASTROLOGY Agnes Hidveghy-Reijo Oksanen
Reijo: I have often wondered how you have developed your ability to sense the influences of the Zodiac in your life. It is known that Astrology started simply from watching the stars. In this sense you have gone back to the origin, but instead of “watching” the sky you are mysteriously, for me, in contact with the Zodiac.
Agnes: That is a very long story. It is inner Work. Inner Work begins with very practical observation of our inner state of being. At the same time, we must see what kind of influences are active at any time. Then we can begin to taste the different kinds of energies. An example: yes, this is a state of being related to the planet Neptune, or I am blocked, and my Saturn-Mars square is activated. I can then see that it is the energy in me, which is working this way or that way and not the energy in others or the outer world. The influences of the outer world and life do not cause my state of being, but they have the same taste, the same aspects. They can give an impulse that I am in this state of being, for example that I have an infection, or that I am exhausted because I did too much yesterday and today I have no energy to do anything. It is my constellation. If I live with the energy that has been given to me then I am really living my life.
Again, and again with my Mars-Saturn Square I experience the limitations that come with it. I cannot do what I would like to do, want to do, or what I think I should do. All my life I was cut back, like a rose bush, by the hand of a good gardener, who has no pity with the rose bush. I then learned to go with these energies and I can now sense the active forces working and I can perhaps have a look at where the planets are and notice how the state of being has the “same taste”, both in the body and the mind. However, it takes years and years to see this.
It is not so that this kind of Astrology can be learned in a weekend seminar, or even in a three-year course in Astrology, like you had. The background, what the energies are and how they work need to be studied. The cosmology and the working of the planets must be known. We cannot begin with looking at your chart and seeing where Mars and Uranus are and that therefore you are in the state of being you are in right now. We can only misuse this type of approach as an excuse for not understanding Astrology.
Reijo: That is the question: how can one learn to sense the influence of the planets in one’s life? What must one do to be able to understand what is happening?
Agnes: To see what my state of being is, is the start. For example, now I am calm, and I can take what comes without stress in my mind. Or I can feel unhappy and dissatisfied because something is not OK for me, and so on. Then the next impulse will bring me to an explosion. It is not only a question of the emotional states. The seeing, what is happening in me, must be objective. For that it is important that among other things I can sense my body. Two days ago, I sensed that my head was heavy. I thought that this is typical, because I ate too many sweets the day before. I looked deeper into it and found out that the sweets certainly did not help, but they were not the cause. Having seen this, I could start acting on the situation and prevent the infection going further and to develop into an illness.
The state of being I talk about is about the whole of me. For example, there is the state of being dissatisfied and having no idea and energy or creativity and being very unhappy about it. It is a darkness where I am closed into, but I know this is the emptiness, out of which the next day there comes an idea and new energy and I can have possibly a creative day. This helps me from doing anything about the “bad” state.
I cannot emphasize enough that we must learn that we get the energy every moment for something. If we do not see what the energy is for then we misuse it. When I am tired then I get the energy for sleep or to have a rest. When I go against it I get more and more exhausted and I cannot get anywhere, and my body and soul cannot recover.
An extreme case in this type of situation is that we get the energy to live, but we also get the energy to die when it is time. Dying for me is every moment when the Saturn-Mars Square, one of the strongest and one of the “worst” aspects one can have in a chart, is active, then it is the time to die. When I have learned that this is the time to die then I do not try to do something against this energy. I take it in a calm way, do the washing up, cleaning or some other simple work; I do not attempt to do some creative work simply because it does not work. Everything goes wrong if I try. There is a barrier, which has been given to me for growing in humility, experiencing the human limitations. It is given to me to understand others and to accept that I am limited. Some people have an instinctive ability to use what they get, but with a strong self-will we always go against the energies; they are often not given to what we think they are.
To learn to work like this is a work of a lifetime. This work is to become sensitive to our state of being and to give up our imagination of how things should be; to see what there is. For example, due to the illness I had from when I was ten, I was continuously exhausted. I thought always that I must do more, but that I am lazy. I simply did not realize that I was tired! I did not call it tiredness; I called it laziness. Nobody told me to look at it again and find out. We all have this same type of problem: we cannot see and respect our state of being; we simply cannot see. The first and the ongoing, continuously most important thing is to stop and to see what my state of being is. When we can see the state then we can also use the energies given to us.
Agnes: I can only speak from my own experience: when I get up early in the morning, let us say at four and write two hours and at ten I suddenly feel that I should have done so many other things, but it seems difficult for the time being. It is still difficult to see: oh, I am tired and at ten o’clock I need a nap. If I accept it, then half an hour later, after a nap, I am OK, and everything seems to be easy to accomplish. Of course, there are also people who will have to deal with laziness and not tiredness; it depends on the constellations in the birth chart… They also must find out how to finish the octave, against which one can always find some reasons why it should not be done.
Things do not function without self-knowledge and the ability to see as a witness. I do not want to use the word “observe” as it can be misunderstood. When I want to observe I do not see. It is about seeing, without comments, without judgement. That is the beginning and the end. In between there are two lines to work with. One is cosmology, to understand the nature of cosmic laws, how the cosmos is functioning. A human being is a whole cosmos. When we learn the way the cosmic energies work and understand what it is all about then we can also understand that something that is seemingly difficult and even negative connotations has always a very positive and important message, there is teaching or education in it (I prefer the word “education” in this sense.) This is what many of those people who have had a heavy illness, accident or heavy problems in life also say: they are being educated. What was difficult, was exactly what gave them such an insight or knowledge that they would not have received if life would have been easy.
We are the process of the cosmic structures; it is not something we get, or something that happens to us, we are the process of cosmic structures enfolding.
Reijo: The circling of the planets is taking place in the outer world and there is an analogy to what is happening in me.
Agnes: The circling of the planets is not in me; it is not because the Mars is here, and the Moon is in some other place. I am this circling. With the help of the analogy I can see what is happening in me or rather, to get it confirmed.
Reijo: You know my experience under anaesthetics and how I experienced going through this kind of process, not a tunnel, as is often referred to, but a vast space where I am supporting the whole cosmos while circling; it is as if the cosmos is the whole of me, but it needs my strong effort to go on. It is also interesting that “I” go around in this cosmos at different speeds at different points, or rather that there are different speeds in my efforts. This is how I can imagine the planets to move around.
Agnes: Yes! Now you are talking about cosmology. The same pattern in the atom, in human being, solar system in the galaxy and in a cell; this is what takes place and in this strange way you have experienced it.
Reijo: On the other hand, this is the only direct experience I have of this movement in me.
Agnes: This is because you do not see yourself continuously. Every mood in us comes, grows and fades and it will happen again and again and again. This is the movement of the Moon. It takes one aspect from the Sun, brings it to full manifestation, like the full Moon and then back again to the Sun.
Reijo: We were talking about it one day of how it would be possible to understand the influence of the Moon and to see the change that takes place due to the changes of the position of the Moon in the sky. I remember that you pointed out that this is perhaps the easiest and best way to start seeing what is happening in us in relation to the planetary world and the lights. In other words, we can see the changes in our moods, which are very much connected with the Moon.
Agnes: Maybe we realize that when this mood gets some nourishment from the outside, then for example we say, “I am angry because this or that happens”. In the mood there is the readiness to become angry. This is what we need to see: that this readiness is continuously changing; in maximum two hours there is a completely different mood in us.
This belongs to life, it is the ever-changing constellation; we have never the same constellation twice, every moment and constellation is new and different from all others. That is life; the process of life, and we are this process of life. What we do with it is another question. Can we extract the quintessence from it or are we simply swept away in this stream and go under?
Quintessence is the nourishment for our essence; the food we get come from the four elements: earth, water, air and fire. All the twelve signs in the Zodiac have their own elements and on the background for each planet and the two lights are their own specific element. These elements are the basic substances of life. The elements relating to us are: body – earth, emotions – water, mental life – air, self-will – fire. We need to learn to obey.
Reijo: What is the role of light in Astrology?
Agnes: It is consciousness and represented in all its aspects by the Sun. We really need to know the astronomical structure to understand what Sun is and what it represents. We need to study, and study needs the energy of attention. If we do not give enough attention to a subject, we cannot learn to understand it. It all needs to be rediscovered by us personally!
It is very sad that in Astrology we read and hear how the Sun and the Moon are considered often to be planets. Of course, they are not planets. With this definition the understanding begins to be totally misled. If we do not see the hierarchic structure in Astrology we remain at a level where we just interpret things with the help of some theories. Then we have no idea of how the constellations can help us to know ourselves. It is possible to see situations more consciously and not go against forces we cannot overcome.
For example: difficult tasks like to climb a mountain gives us a critical situation – we need all our attention and there are risks. It needs an enormous effort. We can only make these efforts when we have a difficult constellation. If all is smooth, why would I make any efforts at all?
It looks like I am telling the contrary to what I was saying in the beginning. If I am not aware of the danger, then I do not prepare myself in the right way and I go forth with illusions to the big task and it will not function. I must know what my state of being is. When my body is not in a good state then I cannot climb a mountain. I must know, to know the difficulties, all the circumstances to be able to face the danger and the difficulties. Then I can decide: either I take it, or I do not take it.
I have learned to take some difficulties that look like a wall I could never climb over, which stops me. I do what is possible right now in the place where I am and then I do not try to go further than the wall or against the wall. This is only made possible when I transform the feeling that I am facing an impossible task. I do what is possible within the limitations. I do it 100% and as well as I can.
