Balsamic Moon Type
All persons born with the moon less than 45 degrees behind the sun, thus about 3 1/2 days before new moon. This is symbolized by the inverted lunar crescent seen before sunrise - thus announcing as it were, the new day.
The approximately three days of this "balsamic" soli-lunar relationship represents one tenth of the whole lunation cycle. In the old Hindu doctrine of cycles, the last tenth part of a cycle (and, but not quite as significantly so, the first tenth of the next) constitute a transition state (sandhya) - and we might say also the seed state. In these last three days of the lunation cycle of thirty days, the cycle, as it were, comes to seed; and this seed is to become the foundation of the future plant, provided conditions for germination are adequate.
This type of personality is, in its highest manifestations, prophetic and completely turned toward the future, even though it feels itself the end-product of the past - yet a past which outwardly or consciously it has left behind. At times the individual feels himself possessed by a social "destiny," or led by a superior power. He is more or less aware of being a kind of shrine (or "field") within which something greater than his personal selfhood is taking place; thus he may readily accecpt sacrifice or martyrdom for the sake of the future, be it the future of a small group or of humanity as a whole. He tends to sense a character of finality in all important relationships he experiences; that is, he sees them both as ends of some process and as means to reach some transcendent goal.
This may lead to fanaticism - as in the case of the French revolutionist, Robespierr, who initiated the cult of the goddess, Reason - or to great political vision, as in Thomas Paine, surnamed rightly the "Father of Democracy," and in Lincoln, the Emancipator. The philosopher Kant, Havelock Ellis, student of the end-results and perversions of the sexual drives, Cecil Rhodes, who had a vision of an African empire, President McKinley under whose Administration the United States began to operate in the field of international politics as a world-power with immense potentialities for leadership - and who was killed in office - and Pope Paul VI, born just before new moon and who revolutionized a good many things in his Church; these men belong to the balsamic type.
In applying the above characterizations of the eight lunation types one must evidently consider first of all the limitations imposed upon an individual by his social environment, culture, etc. It matters little whether we deal with a statesman who dies a martyr to the political Cause he has espoused, or with a teacher of a small rural school (perhaps in an undeveloped region) whose life becomes utterly consecrated to raising the level of education of the village's children. What counts is the quality of the relationships entered upon by the person being considered - the manner in which his or her life of personal, social, cultural relationship is polarized, and thus the nature of the contribution the individual makes to his community or nation.
This eight-fold classification of lunation types does not, however, fill all the requirements of a thorough analysis of personality, and it should be supplemented by another kind of astrological approach to the lunation cycle. This approach leads us to the study of what is called the "Part of Fortune,: and in general to a consideration of the real meaning of all so-called Arabian parts. (Which leads into the chapter on the Part of Fortune as an Index of evolving Soli-Lunar Relationship.)
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