R U D H Y A R A N D J O N E S
A Saturnian Proclamation
by Gavin K. McClung
It is a pivotal, not to say epochal, moment in time when the tenets of humanistic and transpersonal astrology are again being fully propounded throughout the world of astrology at large. The time to do this is right, and the time is now. This is written by one who has recently experienced a personal facet of the great concept of Cycle, about which Dane Rudhyar has spoken so often and so appealingly to those who knew or know him through his books and lectures, or through the illuminative personal encounter that can happen from time to time.
The second return of Saturn is indeed a valuable developmental milestone for anyone who may be so fortunately informed as to be aware of its presence on their personal lifetime-line (or life-timeline). The essential meaning is far greater than any single example or explanation of it can convey. Yet it can be said that at the "third Saturn" (second return) there occurs for an individual a juncture where he or she may correctly see or say in truth: "Now I have evolved from being a very old, perhaps even decrepit
, middle-aged person — and have advanced upon the wheel of life to become now a fresh, young, new-born or reborn infant old-aged person!" The writer, who has experienced this, confirms that it's great to be so young again.
So be it for some new gray hair; so be it for a touch of arthritic symptom from time to time; and so be it for the occasional surprising "touch of wisdom" that may somehow appear on one's personal horizon now and again. There are surprising benefits. Perhaps some part of this affect may even become capable of expression at some level useful to others. We can hope so, at least — just as there was hope in hearing Marc Edmund Jones (Saturn in the MC degree) say fervently and with orotund volume, "Saturn is my absolute favorite planet to work with!"
At a time when almost everything appears to have taken on an intriguing, even hypnotizing sheen of "newness" while civilization and human society speed toward the unknown or merely as yet unappreciated frontiers that lie beyond the superficially-recognized millennial boundary that is known to the Western mind as 2001 — at such a time, all possible rational contact with the living human past of the world has increasing value for everyone, if only because of its radical attention-getting "oldness" (read oddness?), or even its transiently romantic antiquity, or its experiential utility as cultural anchorage that can speak to us most valuably in the here and now of the why for which we do not yet know. Without the Old, there can be no New . . .
As a "new" astrologer, I was fortunate, as were numerous others, to have words of personal conversation with Dane Rudhyar and Marc Edmund Jones both at the same astrological conference, once upon a time, now long ago. At that time, both of these men were well and truly into the old-age phase of their old-age (3rd) Saturn cycles. Jones in that day could lightly joke from the public platform: "I've noticed in recent years a lot of attention being given to 'how to grow old gracefully', but I've decided that I'm more interested in 'how to grow disgracefully old!'" Many, of course, recognized that he was actively doing both — successfully getting to be very old and making a graceful adventure of doing so.