Planetary Music: Understanding Astrological Rhythms

"Planetary Music: Understanding Astrological Rhythms" by Ed Rose is a ground-breaking book which makes a compelling connection between the rhythms of the seasons and the qualities of the astrological signs. It delves deeply into the roots of astrology incorporating music, science, religion, and philosophy. Planets, signs, houses, and aspects are examined in a unified way so that the reader can see how the qualities of each come from the same "rules", the same way of looking at astrology in a rhythmical way.

Does Pluto rule Aries, and, more importantly, what qualities of Aries are Plutonian? How does Saturn rule Aquarius? What is the planetary rulership for a sextile? What are the planetary octaves? What is the relationship of the signs to the houses? All of these questions and more are answered clearly in this book.

Planetary Music has appendices on I Ching, Science/Math, Music, and Kabbalah and an excellent index.

All of the historical insights on this site stem from the rules laid out in this book. For a deeper understanding of astrology, this book is a must read.

"This book is many-layered and written with heart, there is lots of material here, though written with a light hand. The author has many ways of seeing patterns in astrology and he weaves unifying principles throughout the text, which is a welcome approach to an astrology that can oftentimes lose the forest for the trees" -- Mountain Astrologer Dec-Jan '98-'99

The cost of the book is $16 (marked down from $19.95), including shipping and handling, and it is 445 pages long.

NOTE TO BOOKSTORES: Planetary Music is available from New Leaf Distributors ISBN 0-9661522-0-4.

EXCERPT

As you can see, there are labels on the rows and columns of the diagrams that should by now be familiar. You might call these periodic tables of the planetary energies, or three octaves of three notes apiece.

The planets in the first row are personal. This is a little more physically graphic with the planets than with the signs. Just as the heart chakra is the center of a person's being and life force, so the Sun is the center of the solar system.

The Sun is a person's core identity, his or her ego in the sense of a centripetal force that keeps him or her directed and connected. Astrology works not through rays that extend from the Sun, Moon, and planets, but through the mirroring of the solar system within people: microcosm mirroring macrocosm. The mirror of the Sun in people is the central, harmonizing heart chakra in a static, akashic sense and the central flow of his or her life's path in a dynamic, pranic sense. If a person says "I" and points to himself, he is pointing to his heart chakra. When someone asks "How's your life been?" they are asking about this central current of the Sun.

The planets nearest the Sun are close to the creative outpouring from one's central being, just as physically they are nearest the radiance of the Sun. Also, the closer a planet is to the Sun the shorter is its year, and the faster it moves. This means that the inner planets have a high-pitched, personal vibration. They are intimately connected with personal expression and changes in life-direction. They are like filters for the radiance of the Sun, and they bubble along the surface of the life flow.

The outer planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, are more attuned to the infinity of space. Their vibrations correspond to the deep, low-pitched bass notes of an organ that permeate and form a foundation for a musical composition. They are closer to the no-thing of mysticism than to the day-to-day life of the inner planets. They spend hundreds of years in one circle of the Sun; they rule broad social change and broad social ego. However, as with the signs, the state of consciousness of one of these transcendental outer planets does not a spiritual state make, although these planets are sometimes closer to spiritual states than are the inner planets. The outer planets are attuned to the universal akasha of outer space, while the inner planets are more attuned to the pranic energy pouring from the Sun.

The intermediate planets in the middle rows act in a way similar to that of the signs of the zodiac's middle sector. These planets are involved with material manifestation and interaction between people and entities. Their vibrational pitch is halfway between the high-pitched piccolo of the inner planets and the deep bass of the outer. Their periods of revolution are also intermediate. Where the inner planets have periods of revolution on the order of months, the middle planets take two to twenty-nine years to complete a cycle.

Within each row the planets are divided into three columns that also reflect a trinity. This trinity has been labeled Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, but this is only a rough approximation. One may think of the planetary rulers as a trinity of trinities.

A trinity that is useful for understanding the rows and columns is that of coming from a central core to the surface, spreading along the surface, then being withdrawn from the surface back to the central core. This trinity happens within our bodies through the arteries, capillaries, and veins which handles our bloodstream. The arteries split the bloodstream into finer and finer paths on the way to the surface, the capillaries exchange energy at the surface, and the veins integrate the bloodstream into larger and larger vessels on the way back to the heart. Seen in spiritual terms, this is spirit coming up to the surface of life (manifestation) and becoming individualized (Brahma), operating on the surface of life as individuals (Vishnu), then withdrawing back to unity within (Shiva). This same trinity happens in the sectors of the signs.

Each column is identified with one of the three qualities, Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable. However, the columns are different for the two different currents.

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