Capricorn (Makar) & the Manifest Divine

Capricorn Hieroglyph

A Comment on Vivekananda, Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet & Sri Aurobindo's Supramental Vision of Time  by Robert Wilkinson:

Lori, Your article brings up a very interesting point. It has to do with the unusual number of influential spiritual teachers or gurus born under a common astrological sign. As you point out in your response to Philip Goldberg’s article, 'Three Gurus Who Changed the Face of Spirituality in the West', Paramahansa Yogananda, Swami Vivekananda and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi were all born under the sign Capricorn. For those of us inspired to look beyond the feeble excuse of coincidence in these matters, a great truth stands revealed.  Capricorn is one of the most stable and serious of all astrological signs. Its ruler, Saturn, confers on the native a maturity, dignity and discipline unequaled in the other zodiacal signs. Saturn’s function of limitation and constriction allows Capricorn natives to focus their consciousness with a laser-like concentration often giving them deeper insights into the practicalities of life. But for the spiritually inclined, like the gurus mentioned above, the contracting power of Saturn serves an even higher function. In many of its natives it produces an inversion of consciousness and thus a greater affinity to the profound mysteries that Saturn rules. 

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Those of us who have had the privilege of working with Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet [Thea] over the years, have been initiated into many of Capricorn’s mysteries. The most profound of these is the process by which the Unmanifest Divine enters into the Manifestation of Itself. According to Thea, there are two cosmic principles underlying order and organization in the Cosmos; Contraction and Expansion. Contraction is the property or direction of Time and Expansion is the direction of Space. Through a process of Contraction, which is the function of the Vertical dimension, the undifferentiated Transcendent in the act of manifestation is reduced to a Seed, that miraculous Hiranyeretas known as Agni, the first God of the Veda. All of the qualities and attributes of the Transcendent Beyond are drawn, by its own power of manifestation, into the Immanent Seed of Itself. What is compacted through this Involutionary process crosses a resonant threshold where the energy shifts from Vertical to Horizontal, and the material universe is born as energies emerge and Evolve. From that Point or Truth-Seed which lies at the convergence of these two cosmic directions, the compacted energies expand, multiply and grow in accordance with the Gunas of Creation, Preservation and Dissolution.

These sublime Cosmic truths are all contained in the Mother’s original plan for Her Temple and through the Laws of Correspondence we can see that they apply equally to the Microcosm as well as the Macrocosm. 

From the Matrimandir Action Committee's website

Sri Aurobindo confirms these occult principles and their human correspondences in his instructions on the yogic realization of the Individual Truth-Seed or ‘Psychic Being’.

‘There are in fact two systems simultaneously active in the organisation of the being and its parts: one is concentric [horizontal], a series of rings or sheaths with the psychic at the centre; another is vertical, an ascension and descent, like a flight of steps, a series of superimposed planes with the supermind-overmind as the crucial nodus of the transition beyond the human into the Divine. For this transition, if it is to be at the same time a transformation, there is only one way, one path.

'First, there must be a conversion inwards, a going within to find the inmost psychic being and bring it out to the front, disclosing at the same time the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of the nature. Next, there must be an ascension, a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to convert the lower parts.’ 

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga

In this extraordinary quote, Sri Aurobindo discusses the nature of the Individual Being and its own converging directions with the Psychic Being at the center. According to Sri Aurobindo, the transformation begins with a ‘conversion inwards’, a Contraction to a Point, the very Saturnine process we are discussing. In the Mother’s plan for her Temple we can see Sri Aurobindo’s instructions reflected in the Entrance to the Temple which was to have been a flight of 15 stairs perfectly aligned with the North Cardinal Point (Capricorn) and leading upwards into the Inner Chamber. But as we know, this feature along with many others, were rejected by the Mother’s closest devotees in their systematic destruction of her plan. In his ‘Secret of the Veda’ Sri Aurobindo tells us that the sacred journey described in the Veda was not a journey through Space, but a journey in Time through the Year and its twelve months, the central figure of the Veda around which the Sacrifice is conducted. The point where the victory is secured, writes Sri Aurobindo, is the Tenth Month which is Capricorn. This sacred sign is also described as the ‘portal to immortality, the entry to the realm of the Immortal Ones. But owing to the ignorance and bad will of the usurpers in Auroville, the mysteries of Capricorn were completely erased leaving them with virtually no understanding of the proper ingress to the temple, let alone their own Souls.

Given the overwhelming significance of the sign Capricorn and its ruler Saturn, is it any wonder that so many gods and spiritual figures are born under this sign. The ancients tell us that it was in Capricorn that Kore gave birth to the Aeon. It is also the birth sign of Sol Invictus, the Greek God Dionysos, the Roman Janus the Amitaba Buddha and of course, Jesus Christ.

In more modern times we continue to see the Capricornian influence playing itself out in the lives of spiritual gurus, scientists and sages alike. As you pointed out, Paramahansa Yogananda, Swami Vivekananda and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi are all natives of the sign. We can also include Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sir Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Louis Pasteur and even Stephen Hawking. One need only look at their lives or read the biographies of these extraordinary men to see the contracting power of Saturn at work.

But beyond all these, at the core of the Capricorn mystery we find Thea who was not only born at the very heart of this sacred sign but descended as an emissary from its celestial regions to bring its most sublime evolutionary mysteries and sing its cosmic harmonies as no one on earth has done before. Its deepest truths, writes Thea, can only be understood by someone initiated into the secrets of Capricorn which is the sign of the Earth’s Soul.