Management of Measurement Constructs
Hearing the Melody
Recall the Irving Berlin song, “The Song is Ended, but the melody lingers on.” Or from The Song is You, Oscar Hammerstein’s words, “I hear music when I look at you.” Or Lorenz Hart’s words for Richard Rodgers’ music, “With a song in my heart.”
What eloquent statements of being … being in music. There’s a melody, a sound in the horoscope. Listen.
Sure, I could use the word “theme” here instead of “melody”. But the musical reference carries with it sound color, rhythm, composition.
I recall in my presentations in Sydney in February, music was on my mind; I was thinking so strongly in terms of the melody in the horoscope. As illustration, I spontaneously sang the most perfect melody I could think of in the midst of lecture-action: the glorious 16th Variation from Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. The title sounds remote and inaccessible, but the melody is an instant stop-dead-in-your-tracks statement, and you’ve heard it many, many times. It’s perfect in every way. It is very popular, recognizable by sound, perhaps not by title.
My point was two-fold: how difficult, how supremely difficult it is to create a melody, and how eternal the theme is. Horoscopes have melodies. Nature works hard to compose them.
Look at the power melody of just four notes: Beethoven’s Da-Da-Da DA (the opening of his Symphony #5, G-G-G E-flat), making a threatening war statement. The statement endures for lifetimes.
Or just three notes: the enormously famous opening of Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C# minor: ponderously descending in the bass, A — G# — C#….. Boom, boom, BAM.
The entire pieces that follow these openings sing their melody; you hear it throughout. Echoes, variations, but core-continuous.
Music is composed homogeneously; everything should hold together: the notes, the harmonies, and the repetition of patterns. –So it is with the horoscope: Nature orders everything: the planets, their relationships to each other, and the patterns in the Houses. The melody out of it all belongs to us individually; it is the sound we make in life.
Just look at a horoscope with a conspicuous Eastern orientation. Then one with a conspicuous Western orientation. –Do you hear the different melodies beginning? –Then look further into each horoscope: what key measurements do you find reinforcing the melody already emerging in your mind? See how it is articulated, amplified. It becomes individualistically distinct.
Dick Cheney’s horoscope (January 30, 1941 at 7:30 PM in Lincoln NE) begins a melody to public service (western orientation, Aquarian and 6th House statement) with a conspicuous sense of “serving a purpose” (Jupiter-Saturn). This part of the melody is strong and soaring on the sounds of arch-opinionation (Mars in Sagittarius) and then is locked into a driving get-out-of-my-way rhythm … even ruthlessness (Saturn=Pluto/Sun). –I can ‘hear’ that. It helps me appreciate the horoscope for what it is trying to be.
Jimmy Carter’s horoscope (October 1, 1924 at 7:00 AM in Plains GA) creates its melody in terms of social attractiveness and outreach, getting things done for others (Sun in Libra, Moon in Scorpio; Mars ruling the 7th in Aquarius, Uranus in the 6th), with subdued tones of emotional self-sacrifice (WGT), all thematically wrapped in a philosophical/spiritual mind-set harmony (Jupiter* = Sun/Neptune). –What a clear contrast with Cheney! We can just feel the softening containment of the Moon in Scorpio, giving stage to the altruistic Mars energies.
Hitler’s horoscope (April 20, 1889 at 6:30 PM LMT in Braunau am Inn AUSTRIA) has the enormous dark noise of Saturn square Mars-Venus (a peregrine island), sent through Saturn into the bureaucratic roar of Moon-Jupiter in Capricorn in the 3rd. It would be heard everywhere!
Emily Dickinson’s horoscope (December 10, 1830 at 4:40 AM LMT in Amherst, MA) presents idealized, didactic harmonies, with isolated dry note-statements (Venus-Sun-Mercury, Jupiter-Neptune, Saturn peregrine ruling the 3rd) with an underpulse of throbbing needs (Mars-Pluto in the 5th).
Jack Nicholson’s horoscope (April 22, 1937 at 11:00 AM in Neptune NJ) suggests sexy chords that don’t resolve easily (Pluto square Venus-rx), punctuated by dissonant colors of opinions (Mars-rx in Sagittarius quindecile Mercury, ruler of the 3rd), wrapped up in unconventional harmonies (Uranus peregrine)
Yes. This essay is a paean to the Art of Synthesis; it is a way of appreciating the horoscope holistically and skillfully. Musical metaphor is particularly meaningful to me.
The fulfillment of analytical synthesis eludes many astrology students –and indeed, professionals— because they are anchored to piece-meal approaches, pushed along on an assembly-line of detached measurement specifics. The problem is that astrologers don’t have a starting place for synthesis, a procedure of individualistic appreciation. Measurements must give way to synthesis. –I have seen this problem and its solution in thousands of horoscopes, particularly through my Master’s Certification Course.
In learning the art of synthesis properly, the concert begins. Listen for the melodies.