Earthly things must be known to be loVed: diVine things must be loVed to be known.

- Pascal

The true purpose of philosophy (before "philosophy" came to be merely a sterile

word game used to perpetuate intellectual arro#gance) was once held to be the
search for essences and for the
underlying nature of manifested things, all based upon a love of
wisdom. In modern terms, this could be called a search for the
archetypal level of reality. Nowadays, of course, any statement
about "essences" would cause one to be labeled an "occultist." But
when we look around us at the world and try to make some sense
of our lives and the sort of reality with which the mass media
deals, we have to admit that everything of significance is occult,
that is, hidden. Despite all the supposed knowledge that we have
accumulated, meaning is nowhere to be found, except in those
frelds of study that point to a unity between man and the uni#verse. This unity of,
and relation between, man and the universe
is really the only assumption upon which astrology is based.

The Swiss physician Alexander Ruperti (1971) expresses the opinion:

Unfortunately, the scientific attitude has tended to increase the

chaos at the psychological level, because it destroys the value of
the individual and because the type of city and machine#controlled existence it has
produced has also destroyed man's
sense of participation in the rhythms of life and nature. Modern
man tends to forget that science's main concern is the estab#lishment of collective
laws for general application only. The en#vironment science offers to man does not
present him with any
human meaning or purpose; merely cold, intellectual facts
which are supposed to be unchangeable but which, from any
long perspective, may easily change according to the rhythm of
vast cosmic cvcles.
What is the value of trying to fit astrology into the straight#waistcoat of
scientific knowledge, when its technique and basic
philosophy enable one to escape from the prison into which sci#ence has put man's
mind? Would it not be more worthwhile for
us to build up astrology onits own foundations and thus present
it as a means to complemenl the scientific emphasis and to re#orient the
consciousness and thinking ofour modern civilization
which has lost contact with its vital roots in the creative
rhythms of life? . . . Science gives us knowledge, nothing more.
It has nothing to say concerning the why of the universe, and
everything dealing with the understanding and the significance
of individual human values and goals is outside its domain. . . .
astrology's gift to mankind is its capacity to solve and explain
that which science cannot and does not attempt to do. We need
more vision, more constructive imagination, if we would free
ourselves from our present bondage to analytical and
mathematical details, to statistical methods. The whole is al#ways more than the
sum ofits parts and no collection ofseparate
data, however complete, on the outward behavior and charac#teristics of a person,
will ever reveal him as a living human
being with a life purpose of his own.