Bad seeds, or, Does the Yin Yang Horoscope moralize? I
recently came upon an excerpt from some of Oscar Wilde's late writing; a confessional
piece where the author, imprisoned and now dying from venereal disease because of a
lifestyle excessive in every imaginable way, faced up to the moral bankruptcy of
a life all but over. He, the genius to whom all the doors of high society had
stood
open; he, the representative of the finest in culture, had totally squandered it
all by shortsighted hedonism, pleasure seeking.Seeing Wilde's two birth symbols - both problematic - made me wonder. Depth psychologist James Hillman caused a stir in the mid 90s with his bestselling The Soul's Code wherein he argued that each soul is born with a particular motif, a design for life prepared beforehand, in Heaven, so to speak. Knowing of Hillman's Platonic leanings goes a long way to explaining the theory. How brave and audacious of Hillman to reacquaint us with the original Western version of the saga of the reincarnating soul! Once Plato was psychology - before the word was invented - and he may yet be considered such again. In this book, Hillman also launched the idea of "bad seeds," that indeed some people appear to arrive here with an altogether "negative mission," perhaps a missing piece in the puzzle of the individual soul that must be lived out and integrated. (Don't miss Hillman, his Re-visioning Psychology has been a most rewarding reading experience for me; he had the guts in the 1970s to reintroduce the concept of the soul into western thinking. Aficionados of Chinese philosophizing over the ever flowing Tao should be at home with his concept of the soul, individually and collectively as the anima mundi, the world soul.) Hillman's ideas find vague echoes in the Ho Lo Li Shu method underlying these Yin Yang horoscopes. Or at least, the birth patterns are open to such an interpretation. Hillman studied the case of dictator Adolf Hitler and found him a representative of the "bad seed" category. Now, it is one thing to point out a glaring case from the past, but the idea of an astrological system having foreknowledge of bad seeds will mean stepping on a lot of people's toes, and not only they having had the "misfortune" to be born under some of the less flattering Chinese signs! Page through the I Ching and notice the vast number of problematic typological situations - some prognoses appear to promise very little indeed. The cyclical character of this astrology implies history will repeat itself. There will appear moments apparently reserved for "difficult" life experiences. The whole idea of being "born bad" fits ill in with opinions on this system offered elsewhere on the site. But the method of calculation was presented "as is" in "The Astrology of I Ching" by Chu & Sherrill in 1976 and it was pretty obvious the authors themselves had provided a philosophical backdrop to the method of calculating the birth pattern (like mentioning karma, which, admittedly was present in China as a concept during the Ming dynasty, the age during which this astrology was created). We no longer know what the makers of the system thought about its grand 180 year cycle of time with its shimmering flow of one or other of the 64 hexagrams from the I Ching. Perhaps this system was conceived in an almost fatalistic way... We will follow that road for awhile in the following. But the very idea of pre-destination seems to modern westerners gruesome. For hundred of years they have cultivated the myth of an outstanding human being, divorced from nature - a nature which itself is totally devoid of intelligent design. To the ancient Chinese, nature instead manifested many signs of an hidden, underlying order. Accordingly, every year there will be several "time slots" of the very type that once delivered an Adolf Hitler to the world. Will this particular time invariably produce a person with an unfortunate and harsh childhood like the one Hitler had, and which in turn fosters a angry and shallow emotional quality in the person? And will this person then invariably cause a mess in whatever he or she chooses to engage in? To these questions I have no answer since out of the 600 world celebrities whose horoscopes I have so far calculated, the only other person sharing hexagram and controlling line with Adolf Hitler belonged to classic composer, conductor and pianist Leonard Bernstein! This name will probably carry positive connotations to those who recognize it. Both these persons were born exactly in the center of their "double hour" and so were represented by only one hexagram and its controlling line. In other words, both are supposedly clear-cut cases of this one symbolism. On the surface of things, the symbol's "story" seems to fit Hitler perfectly but Bernstein not at all: the story of an dysfunctional well whose waters will certainly poison anyone who drinks it! Indeed, this is one of of the 384 individual lines which may be taken as a literal statement: the well is in fact poisoned or unhealthy and not even animals would drink such water (implication: and how much less suitable is this water to men). How true a picture this is of Hitler's racist "teaching" and dreams of world supremacy! But how poorly it seems to correspond to the life achievement of the famous composer and conductor, if not indeed this system considers classical music to be dirty water, that is, "no-good nourishment," and a poison to the mind! One might wonder since classic composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was also born under bad auspices! :-)
However, looking at Bernstein's biography, one finds his father almost aggressively opposed to young Leonard's interest in music. Hitler's problem with his father and early artistic ambitions comes to mind... Maybe we here listen into the childhood home and hear its warning to both the young men, "don't drink that water!", as elsewhere the possibility has been pointed out the birth symbol may only delineate the outer circumstances, leaving man the to handle his challenges with a "free will." Due to the scarcity of cases, would a study of the "secondary omens" provided by this method be of assistance? No, because Bernstein was born under an even poorer general degree of "auspiciousness" than was Hitler. A total of -3 for Hitler puts him about where "inauspiciousness" should begin to be felt (and objectively noticeable in personality and/or destiny), while -5 for Bernstein would indicate no uncertain deprivation of the stuff that makes for a good, comforting childhood milieu. The rumored self-hate of Bernstein after cheating his wife on her life investment, may hint at a private feeling dimension to that life not too dissimilar to Hitler's after all. We seem to sense darkness to the inside of both these men. Once again we confront the issue of what a birth hexagram symbol covers. I believe the upper and lower "trigram" should be read as a simplistic blueprint for the outer, action oriented side, and the inner, feeling oriented side. This would give us the trigram Sun, belonging to the principle of Yin (darkness) as the foundation inside both these men. The characteristic of "wind" is that it is not settled, it is variable - to an sometimes almost sickening degree. We also seem to hear voices in the wind, so it is most assuredly associated with mental phenomena. Psychologist Hillman and some forms of philosophy hold that, since the soul chooses when and with what people to incarnate, it follows that this circumstantial, external or "outer clothing" somehow connects with the soul's interiority at that time of being born as a human. These are the outer circumstances that will best serve the soul; they are the clothes it either needs to grow into, or outgrow! In the cases Hitler and Bernstein that outer world is described by the trigram K'an, a rush of water, a plunge into an abysmal depth. The symbol of running water figures time and again combined with other trigrams in hexagrams that deal with troublesome times and/or situations. Still, the idea of being born a "bad seed" fits ill with these two cases of the same birth symbol - what separates Hitler from Bernstein seems to be so much more than what unites them, at least if we look to the effects of their activities while on earth! Seeking further explanation as to how the image of "dirty, poisonous water" may have manifested in Bernstein's life is perhaps given by his wild promiscuous homosexual life (according to wikipedia, quoting a biography). Indeed, this strikes up a common denominator of the birth hexagram here referred to, the one called The Well (#48). That symbol has come to my attention as being especially frequently associated with sexual problems and the issue of locating one's true identity and not get stuck in a shallow external "imitation."
This is highly politically incorrect as many would like to see a "third sex" (and possibly more, as yet undiscovered variants may be brought to light) be given an equal standing with heterosexuality. As against this, the birth symbol The Well would seem to address some people born under the symbol of the well to dig deeper before pronouncing themselves to have found the "identity" of, or "reason" for a phenomenon. There is in this hexagram found the explicit warning not to naively take the city's outer appearance to indicate its deeper nature. "Things may not be what they seem." This admonition to be wary of outer appearances certainly introduces an oscillation into the entire situation - for what if the interior ("the well") says another thing than the city walls, and then the contents of the well too turns out to be a facade? Are we getting into a Pandora's box-type of loop here, where a final "essence" can never be pin-pointed? Indeed, what is "water" anyway? Does not this formless substance falsely seem to conform utterly to its external containers when in fact merely waiting for an escape route? Water as symbol for the boundless and as such naturally freed from narrow considerations of gender. (Still, the trigram is symbolically connected to semen in this system, blood and semen - visible vehicles or representations for the invisible life-force). Apropos water's negation of a final form, we do find two people possessed by a death wish born under this hexagram, morose writer Hans Christian Andersen and Gary Gilmore, notorious for having insisted on receiving the death penalty for committing two murders to this very end. Thus this hexagram housing the symbol of an essentially formless flowing water (contained within a well) cuts both ways. Because who is to tell whether one's experience of having arrived to the wrong "city," having been equipped with the wrong body, is not the fruit of a shallow emotionality and very crude ad hoc rationalizing? Opening just one further Pandora figurine may lead to an opposite conclusion! The question of Hitler's sexual bent (see professor Lothar Machtan's book on the subject, "The Hidden Hitler") may turn out he was not unlike Bernstein, who went in both directions before later in life settling on gay. In fact, after beginning as homosexuals, both men realized this would hinder them in their ambition and at least played it down. This supposedly occurred around 39 in the case of Hitler and in the early 30s in the case of Bernstein through his marriage (subsequently broken, when reverting to homosexuality). So the the bottom line of The Well would therefore seem to moralize in shouting out a warning to people not to contaminate themselves (or others) with "the dirty water of the well" (- could that be read as anal sex?)... Bernstein's sometime wife would have been well advised by this horoscope too, had she only known about it! "Don't drink this, or suffer the consequences." Chu & Sherrill, in their "The Astrology of I Ching," equates the dirty well water with ill-founded ideas, rousing up the muddy sediments at the bottom of the well, that is. "Muddied sentiments" would seem to fit both cases of the bottom line quite well. Born to the fourth line we find Leonardo da Vinci who, true to the fashion of the 15th century, acted out a homosexual lifestyle too. The line judgment merely notes that a "well being restored will not be blameworthy any more" (restoring it will prevent the muddy water of its corresponding line at the very bottom). Not even now "home-free!" Given the admiration accorded to da Vinci in the West, one wonders what lifestyle it takes to make this Chinese systems nod approvingly, though it is of course a fact that da Vinci sometimes wasted his talent and spent time on "unworthy" matters such as military machinery (according to one view-point, the military would perhaps have wished him to prioritize machinery and let go that useless "arty" inclination...) Again we get the distinct feeling there DOES seem to be a bit of moralizing going on with this system. It does take sides, depending on whether the symbolism detracts from the Tao, the Universal (and moral) Norm, or points toward it. In fact, this is the only hexagram where I have noticed an unusually percentage of sexual deviation, 6 out of 22 celebrities. Besides Hitler (uncertain as to his later life though) and Bernstein, there is the writer Truman Capote, the philosopher Schopenhauer and the hard-to-pin-down pop star Michael Jackson (asexual?). These were distributed among various controlling lines. I have also non-celebrity cases of repeated rape and deep-rooted frigidity under this strange hexagram of "dipping (stuff) into the well," attempting to retrieve something nourishing from the depths. Things may go awry here, that much seems clear. Needless to say, the majority of cases on file are straight, but as mentioned, this is the one hexagram which I noticed homoerotic bent is unusually noticeable. By this lengthy excursion on the acute discomfort accepting one's present bodily sex, I by no mean this to expresses the idea of being "born a bad seed." This body/soul dichotomy seems also to appear in "projected" or "externalized" forms - what of American TV host Jay Leno's (line three) obsession with "phallic extensions" (he collects fast cars and motorcycles) for instance? Who do usually need to "ground" his/her gender by objectifying measures? One at odds with his/her bodily sex? One who is latently homosexual? Loosely related to these thoughts, I have also come across a (non-famous) female case of being into traditionally male extreme sports, lending support the the pent-up water of the well "wishing" to plunge ahead and take risks (the death wish again? breaking with the constriction imposed by bodily sex?). "Plunging ahead," acting the dare devil, is one psychological characteristic ascribed to running water in this system. Not for nothing do we find the rushing water in the hexagram of coping with war or other extreme circumstances. But in the Army, Shih (#7), the running water is naturally collected within the earth - not locked up in a man-made irrigation system. The difference in symbolism is worth pondering, perhaps. It may also be noted that our main characters in this meandering story, Hitler and Bernstein, were both seen in the role of educator. Hitler in giving speeches and "educating" the nation, and Bernstein as televised teacher of classical music, aiming to haul in a new young generation. To the nourishing well, as metaphor, we should expect leadership tendencies, and a wish to "water and fertilize its surroundings." In connection with the warning sounded by the hexagram against superficiality, I noted another parallel between Adolf Hitler and Leonard Bernstein: Hitler loved to collect pictures of German peasants and their laboring in the fields (water to irrigate the lands!); he seemed to have entertained some quasi-religious notion of himself as the savior of the lower classes. Now something of the kind appears to have been a figment of Bernstein's mind too, according to the novel based on actual facts and published in 1970. The chic New York elite, so the story goes, had a penchant for identifying themselves with worthy causes and in this case Bernstein staged a meeting between the Black Panthers - voicing the oppressed black people's sentiment - and the socialites of the Big Apple
Again the curious warning not to mix outside with inside comes to mind; did Bernstein commit the same mistake as Hitler did toward the Jews, Gypsies (and other minorities)? To value them as something lesser, each in his own way trying to produce a "solution"? The Well warns of even trying to evaluate things before investigating the well (which water, of course, tells of the common essential identity). We'll leave the sub-theme of Hitler and Bernstein here, having hardly exhausted the subject, which has a lot to do with the credibility and applicability of this astrological system.
Two trying "double hours" in a row - more than a warning? So then what of Oscar Wilde (16 Oct 1854 03:00 AM, Dublin, Ireland), mentioned at the very beginning? Here is a man with the commonplace occurrence of being born under two symbols about equally strong. Whereas I have conjectured some celebrities have been "saved" from a "difficult" symbol by an altogether favorable complementary one, in other cases the reverse have been the case. So, as in the case of Hitler/Bernstein, no certain conclusions can be drawn as to whether this system even statistically deals with pre-determined "bad seeds." Because, the abovementioned pair - given both their birth times are correct - has already shown the possibility of living out ones "theme" in more or less harmful ways, yes, even realizing it to be "politically and strategically" wise not to let one's personal sexuality become a stumbling stock in one's career. To that extent both Hitler and Bernstein "improved" upon their very poor birth omen. Hitler arguably made matters worse by instead wildly projecting his "inner demons" onto the outer world... Seeing celebrities born under one harmonious sign and one inharmonious, and sometimes succeeding and sometimes becoming notorious, I have toyed with the idea that perhaps it is only under very rare cases of two consecutive trying symbols, lasting four hours of western time, we find those manifestations in life sometimes referred to as "bad seeds." The fate of Oscar Wilde is one such case having fuelled this speculation. Only those segments of prolonged "depression" would be those times during which, according to psychologist James Hillman, the soul voluntarily enters the world in order for a full "shock treatment," designed to bring it to a fuller awareness of an already established tend or tendency within itself that can only be explained by the theory of reincarnation. That is, two consecutive "bad" birth omens would so to speak confirm the badness of the other, and result in a "born bad person." Please let me repeat this is highly speculative, but we are tasting the "other view" now, that of a full-fledged pre-determinism. Reason for my even setting "free will" aside for a second, are some exceptional personal dreams during the last 25 years (some confirmed to having contained obscure historical personages). These have caused me to at least contemplate the possibility of a soul sometimes undertaking an extreme journey, pushing things to their ultimate limit so as to fully live and experience the consequences of that line of commitment. Famous Swedish seer and metaphysician Emmanuel Swedenborg, is a typical case of one birth symbol not promising much good, while the other is highly auspicious. In this case one can certainly see criticism leveled at Swedenborg's philosophy in the less auspicious hexagram (Emmanuel Kant mocked him badly for erecting a huge edifice of unsupportable speculation), but just as apparent is the connection between the "good" hexagram and the visionary and religious side of the man's nature. The somewhat critical hexagram was Shêng (#46), "The One Who Pushes Upwards" (theme title indeed reminiscent of Swedenborg's ascent to the heavens to envisions the world of angelic beings "up above"). This is not criticism in any way (confirmation from the "Great Man" is promised!), but a birth to the third line in the linear complex is given a rather ominous verdict: "[He is like one who] pushes upwards into a empty city." It should be noted the word "empty" in Chinese has a secondary meaning of "worthless," "insubstantial." This is held to indicate a non-reflecting and gullible type of personality. The city MAY be nothing more than a mirage in the desert, but it may also have been deliberately emptied, leading the "pushy type of person" into a staged ambush! It may also be the city has been deserted for a good reason: the Chinese held that a city could be contaminated by evil spirits because of severe wrongs committed within its walls. Like some "ground zero" where the population had long left because a nuclear disaster had struck making the entire area seriously contaminated by radiation... Now here comes a restless and ambitious person and sees the city. It looks so easy to enter into and take control of that the soul here appears to disconnect from all sound judgment together with the capacity for reflection. It now trusts as being sufficient the pure physical forward movement (shêng, "pushing upward," stressing only effort as such). But against this dubious or perhaps only a bit headless and naive situation, we must also notice the actual hour within which Swedenborg was born (the covert warning against rushing into empty cities appearing a while after his actual birth and perhaps not to be unduly stressed). In the main this writer, scientist, seer and religious founder was born under the impressive hexagram of Heaven, and depicted (by its second line) as a "dragon appearing," an image of an immensely creative force manifesting and rendering itself visible in THIS world, now ready to deliver ITS heavenly visions. One may smile upon noticing singer Madonna is also born to this particular line. The Heavenly hexagram also is that for the birth time of Bill Gates, the world's richest man. But as if to underscore how different he is from the tiny representatives of Heaven "only" appearing "on ground level" (Swedenborg, Madonna et. al.), his controlling line is the uppermost, depicting a "dragon at extreme height." (The attendant exclamation "Regretful!" should not be taken to seriously; do remember the utter nerdishness of the young Gates, totally incapable of connecting to the common man, exactly as is predicted for the top line of heavenly genius. The very fact this dragon always flew so high above the common man is what rendered him so successful in the end.) But to return to Oscar Wilde a final time! He suffered the misfortune of being born in the uncertain overlap between two Chinese two hour segments, and both these time slots being of a critical nature! He did, in fact, share Swedenborg's penchant for "pushing into empty cities," indicating a physically vital but naive person who rushes forward whenever an opportunity presents itself (an "empty city" to claim for oneself). The Chinese symbolism here appears, other good qualities such as charm and sex appeal notwithstanding, to emphasize a combination of heedlessness and greedy opportunism. "Fools rush in where angels fear to go"... And the complementary theme is if possible even more endangered, and perhaps that one he - without ever having heard of this Chinese method - alluded to towards the end of his life. Here we learn of "The Advancing One," a brilliant person invited to mingle among the socialites in society's most exclusive salons, even receiving three audiences with the Emperor in a single day! Whereas the Chinese symbolism so often must be interpreted as an allegory, in the case of Oscar Wilde, this was (excepting the part about the Emperor) the literal truth! But then comes the backlash: Wilde is allotted the fourth line in the symbol of advancement. Interestingly this (double) hour again refers to greed, perhaps similar to that of the previous time segment where the appearance of an "empty city" ("a free lunch") threatened to empty the person of all sound reason. In connection with high society the judgment is much sterner, because here is indicated a corruption of those qualities one rightfully should expect from the aristocracy or those admitted to it: since this tiny elite already possesses all imaginable worldly wealth, such a privileged life should not turn to itself to produce more of the same, but aim to transcend itself. A highly privileged life should concern itself with realizing the higher truths in life, finding the spiritual meaning of it all. In this rarefied clime with its high-minded aims, we now find the fourth line pointing finger and revealing what Oscar Wilde appears to have been pre-destined to become: "A rodent advancing [and mixing with the nobility]! How humiliating!" It would appear this fourth line is warned of entirely missing the point of WHY advancing into and moving among the aristocracy! Given the combined symbolism with one hungering for an "empty city" to claim as one's own, it is hard to see how Wilde could have avoided the trap of self-aggrandizement and the utter degradation he caused to his life. Once again this astrological system makes us wonder whether souls to in fact pick "destinies" to experience a bad way to its uttermost limit. In that way they may the more forcefully "swing the other direction" next time around... And life goes on.
PS. It would have been amusing to point out G. W. Bush as the only other world famous person besides Wilde so far come to light during my investigations acting out the role of a "pushy guy, mistaking empty cities for reality," if it weren't for the dire situation our world is in right now. |
