Printed in the Zenith News Notes No 111, March 2016
Introduction to the Seven Holy Planets
The teachings of Ageless Wisdom given by B.O.T.A. are designed to assist us to become more than who we are today, and also to achieve ‘wholeness’ and a balanced personality. By the awareness of being in a human body, we share in Universal planetary energies that are penetrating and influencing our consciousness. We are also part of the World Soul and of the solar system which is really our larger body.
The make-up of our physical bodies are such that all humanity shares seven centres of force in the body which are dispersed in different strengths, relationships and levels of expression. Each birth chart indicates the relationships of the different functions of our nature, one to the other. We are working to gain control of these planetary forces that are above us in the heavens as well as within us, thereby balancing these forces and improving our relationships with others.
The planets are influences. As they travel around the zodiac they exert influences according to their own specific nature or vibratory tone.
The Planets
| Planet | Sephiroth | Tarot Key | World |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Moon | Yesod | Key 2 The High Priestess | Assiah -Yetzirah – Astral |
| 2. Mercury | Hod | Key 1 The Magician | Yetzirah– Personal Mental |
| 3. Venus | Netzach | Key 3 The Empress | Yetzirah – Personal Mental |
| 4. Sun | Tiphareth | Key 19 The Sun | Briatic – Egoic |
| 5. Mars | Geburah | Key 16 The Tower | Briatic– Higher Mind |
| 6. Jupiter | Chesed | Key 10 The Wheel of Fortune | Briatic – Higher Mind |
| 7. Saturn | Binah | Key 21 The World | Atziluth – Divine Soul or Cosmic Mind |
1. The Moon – Yesod
At the bottom of the Tree of Life we begin with the Moon which corresponds to the Sephiroth Yesod. In a chart, the Moon is thought to be the significator of the subconscious inheritance from past lives. It corresponds to Key 2, The High Priestess. This Key is the keeper of the records of the past, as the mistress of memory and as the recorder of stored-up experience.
Look to Key 2 which is full of Moon symbolism.
The Moon that we see in the heavens is the closest body to the Earth and thus has a most intense influence upon our planet and all who reside therein. This planet affects the tides, our cellular consciousness, the gravitational pull etc.
Through its correspondence with Yesod, the Moon is related to the principle of reproduction and its activity throughout the entire planet – every living creature from the most minimal single cell to the largest complex of cells. This includes mental reproduction, which is the basis of memory.
Our attitudes towards this reproductive energy must be made pure as The High Priestess represents the pure, virginal element of life, and Yesod is also called the Pure Intelligence, which translates as the pure or clear expression of God.
Yesod is also our Foundation which is related to reproduction and to The High Priestess’s scroll which contains all that we have been previously in this life and in past incarnations.
The subconscious memories we bring with us into any incarnation are the tendencies we develop during life and our responses to these will be in terms of what we have developed in the past. Our lives are not determined by environment.
Residing in subconsciousness is a history of all living creatures since the beginning of manifestation. We are part of the All. We all have this knowledge deep within our scroll and we share it with everyone else.
Yesod is the seat of Nephesh, the vital or animal soul and of the automatic consciousness. The habitual way we see our environment and our relationships with others will constitute the patterns that eventually become manifest.
The fundamental power of subconsciousness is to store and record impressions. We have access to the storehouse of cosmic memory through the medium of subconsciousness.
The pituitary body in the brain is the principle centre where the Moon vibration enters the body. This organ is protected by a little ‘skull within a skull’ known as the sella turcica, or Turkish saddle. Endocrinologists have found that all bodily rhythms are regulated by this organ, including the bony growth of the skeleton, the respiratory rate, the waking and sleeping rhythm and the menstrual cycle.
Conclusion – The Moon
We must train ourselves to think of ourselves as cosmic beings. We all have seven bodies, and the Moon is aligned to the astral body in Yesod.
Yesod is part of our ‘personality complex’ and it is the training of our subconsciousness in this Yesod area that is the challenge during our spiritual endeavours.
This goal of this training is the ’humanising’ of our subconsciousness so it is bought under our control. The method we use to do this is via self-consciousness, Hod and the planet Mercury (see below)
We must train ourselves to think of ourselves as cosmic beings. We all have seven bodies, and the Moon is aligned to the astral body in Yesod.
The Moon – General Information
The Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite. It is one of the largest natural satellites in the Solar System, and, among planetary satellites, the largest relative to the size of the planet it orbits.
- Earth’s only natural satellite, one of the largest relative to its planet
- Distance: 384,400 km
- Radius: 1,737 km
- Age: 4.527 billion years
- Gravity: 1.622 m/s²
- Orbital period: 27 days
- Density: 3.34 g/cm³
The Moon in Mythology
In mythology the moon is often female, a goddess who may be paired with a sun god. The Incas of South America told of a brother and sister, the moon maiden and the sun man, who were the ancestors of the royal Incas. In the Mayan writing system, a symbol showing the moon goddess seated inside the moon was used before the names of noble women. The Greeks associated the moon with the goddess Artemis, sister of Apollo. They also called it Hecate, Cynthia, and Selene. The Roman name for the moon was Luna. Native American names for the moon include the Old Woman Who Never Dies and the Eternal One.
Sometimes, however, the moon is male. The Inuit of Greenland picture the moon as a hunter sitting in front of his igloo. Norse mythology speaks of a moon son and a sun daughter, and Mrs Sun and Mr Moon are part of German folklore.
2. Mercury – Hod
The next Sephiroth is Hod and is ruled by Mercury and relates to our self-consciousness.
Without the personal factor of our human intellectual activity the latent potencies of the Life Power cannot be completed, which is why Hod is called the Perfect Intelligence.
Hod also forms part of the personality complex so the use of our intellect in everyday life via self-consciousness direction is seen in Key 1 The Magician. And it is a magical power we use when utilising conscious direction of our thoughts.
Look to Key 1 to see what we are controlling with our intellect. The wand is will, the cup is memory and imagination, the sword is action and the coin represents form. Every magical transformation we are able to bring about results from this use of will, imagination, action and physical embodiment.
We are cultivating our garden because everything that surrounds us is the result of subconscious forces.
Our objective mind which is the vehicle for the expression of the Mercury vibration can control these subconscious forces directly and can modify and adapt the rhythms of vibration operating at subconscious levels.
It is humanity only that can achieve the full flower of self-consciousness. This attainment cannot be achieved by any sub-human or subconscious level of being for ‘Nature unaided always fails’.
Therefore the human personal factor through the intellect is required to bring about the development and perfection of the powers of man and nature.
Conclusion – Mercury
You strengthen what you attend to. You build what you give your attention to. Mind is the builder. Your attention is your first great power of creation.
To be attentive to the here and now is Life. To be inattentive to the here and now is death.
Everyone has an intellect. Use your intellectual awareness to see the correlation of the planets with our personality attributes which aids to dissolve the illusion of separateness.
You strengthen what you attend to. You build what you give your attention to. Mind is the builder. Your attention is your first great power of creation.
Mercury – General Information
Mercury is the smallest and closest to the Sun of the eight planets in the Solar System, with an orbital period of about 88 Earth days.
- Smallest and closest planet to the Sun
- Distance from Sun: 57,910,000 km
- Radius: 2,440 km
- Day length: 58d 15h 30m
- Mass: 3.285 × 10^23 kg (0.055 Earth mass)
- Orbital period: 88 days
- Surface area: 74,800,000 km²
Mercury in Mythology
In Roman mythology, Mercury was the god of trade, merchants, thieves and travellers. He was the messenger of the gods. He is often represented wearing winged sandals and holding a staff with two snakes around it. He showed the way for dead souls to Pluto’s realm.
3. Venus – Netzach
Our desires are the ‘gifts from God’ and the ‘fuel’ which vitalises and drives creative imagination.
The Venus vibration is the basis of our ability to create new combinations of ideas.
Venus always personifies the unfailing power of love. Love is the attractive force which maintains the order of the universe. It is the power behind every form of desire. Desires have real substance and real power. A clear-cut image is a real thing formed of mental substance.
We only have to look around and within us to see the beauty of the forms the One Life expresses. Venus is this image-building power behind all forms.
Look inside yourself to see that your heart and feeling are the truly magical secrets. Your imagination fuels, contributes to and aids evolution.
To love fully we must have developed enough creative imagination to put ourselves in another’s place, and therefore have the empathy and sensitivity to understand the other person fully, without judgement or condemnation.
The Venusian desire nature is attributed to the pairs of opposites, wisdom and folly. Through our use of desire we make many mistakes, but these very mistakes, because of the repercussions we must bear, grow and evolve us. Next time we will make wiser choices and more accurate decisions.
The Venus vibration is both cosmic and personal. God manifests the world through creative imagination and we ‘created in his image’ likewise create our world through imagination. Subconscious imagery, the patterns in subconsciousness build our bodies from birth to adulthood. This same power of creation can be used to perfect our physical bodies towards adeptship.
When we love we must see our love as an expression of the divine attractive quality that has whirled universes into being and kept them all in their proper courses. We must see ourselves as part of this great drama, see our love as a representation of the ‘strong force of all forces’, overcoming every subtle and penetrating every solid thing.
Conclusion – Venus
Looking at the Tree of Life it is seen that the personality complex comprises the (the Moon – subconsciousness), Hod (Mercury – intellect) and Netzach (Venus – emotions). These areas are the focus for transmutation. It is our self-conscious attention to the various states of feeling, acting, being and reacting which are responsible for humanising our subconsciousness.
Every time we take a negative emotion and control it, even a little bit, we ‘humanise’ ourselves to that degree. Every time we let a negative emotion speak or act through us, we are heading in the opposite direction of letting negativity control us.
We are learning to control and manipulate primordial states of energy, and with the wonderful, positive imagery of Tarot helping us to make the difference in our own life and the lives of others, and ultimately the World Soul, may we realise the importance and the far-reaching effects of our endeavours.
We are learning to control and manipulate primordial states of energy, and with the wonderful, positive imagery of Tarot helping us to make the difference in our own life and the lives of others, and ultimately the World Soul, may we realise the importance and the far-reaching effects of our endeavours.
Venus – General Information
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It has no natural satellite. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.
- Second planet from the Sun
- Orbit: 224.7 Earth days
- No natural satellites
- Distance from Sun: 108,200,000 km
- Day length: 116d 18h
- Radius: 6,052 km
- Mass: 4.867 × 10^24 kg (0.815 Earth mass)
- Surface area: 460,234,317 km²
Pentagram of Venus
The pentagram of Venus. Earth is positioned at the center of the diagram, and the curve represents the direction and distance of Venus as a function of time.
The pentagram of Venus is the path that Venus makes as observed from Earth. Successive inferior conjunctions of Venus repeat very near a 13:8 orbital resonance (Earth orbits 8 times for every 13 orbits of Venus), shifting 144° upon sequential inferior conjunctions. The resonance 13:8 ratio is approximate. 8/13 is approximately 0.615385 while Venus orbits the Sun in 0.615187 year.
Venus in Mythology
In Roman mythology, Venus was the goddess of love, sex, beauty, and fertility. She was the Roman counterpart to the Greek Aphrodite. However, Roman Venus had many abilities beyond the Greek Aphrodite; she was a goddess of victory, fertility, and even prostitution. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, Aphrodite was born of the foam from the sea after Saturn (Greek Cronus) castrated his father Uranus (Ouranus) and his blood fell to the sea. This latter explanation appears to be more a popular theory due to the countless artworks depicting Venus rising from the sea in a clam.
References
The Esoteric Astrology of Tarot, Wikipedia, Developing Supersensory Powers
Read more: The Seven Holy Planets of the Tree of Life: PART 2 (Sun, Mars and Jupiter)
Read more: The Seven Holy Planets of the Tree of Life: PART 3 (Saturn)