Thoughts on Dane Rudhyar?

AppLeo

Well-known member
Have you read works by Dane Rudhyar? Did you like what he said? What are his best works? I'm thinking about reading his work.
 

waybread

Well-known member
I'd recommend reading him, as he was a big influence on the development of modern astrology, construed as a discipline for self-transformation. Enlightenment by the signs and houses.

My assessment? At first I thought this was pretty heady stuff.

Now I think it's cotton candy for the soul.
 

IleneK

Premium Member
The book I found most practically useful by Rudhyar is The Lunation Cycle. It gives you a really in depth feel for the Moon in all its phases.
 

greybeard

Well-known member
I'd recommend reading him, as he was a big influence on the development of modern astrology, construed as a discipline for self-transformation. Enlightenment by the signs and houses.

My assessment? At first I thought this was pretty heady stuff.

Now I think it's cotton candy for the soul.

Cotton candy....
Even so he's worth the read. His major work is "The Astrology of Personality". I have two of his books: The Lunation Cycle and An Astrological Mandala, his book on the Sabian Symbols. But in most cases I prefer the original work on the symbols by Jones.
 

greybeard

Well-known member
I guess Leila, sometime after Dane's death, passed his mantle on to Michael Meyer. Meyer seems to control Rudhyar's website now.

Poor guy went off the deep end and developed a messiah complex. His "A Handbook ...." is worth having.
 

greybeard

Well-known member
Have you read works by Dane Rudhyar? Did you like what he said? What are his best works? I'm thinking about reading his work.

App, on the Rudhyar website you'll find some good and useful articles.

His book on The Houses is a good one. I had it until it was stolen.

Here's the story on that...

I was living in Las Cruces, N.M., but was going to move back down to old Mexico. I packed my astrological library into two large suitcases and put them on the back seat of my car, then drove down to Juarez to enjoy a big bowl of pozole. I parked almost directly across the street from the busy 24-hour restaurant, under a street light on the main street in town and went in to enjoy my meal.

When I came back out and got in my car the window wing was broken out and the suitcases gone. Lost my whole collection of astrology books.

I have always wanted to see the look on that thief's face when, after he lugged those very heavy suitcases into some nearby alley, he opened them to find nothing but astrology books...all in English.

"Que la chin....!?!"
 
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Frisiangal

Well-known member
I agree that Rudhyar's work can be 'heavy reading'. To my mind it goes deep into the psychology of human experience rather than just 'Mars can make you angry'.

Like any book his works contains many 'gems' that stick in the mind. For me his explanation regarding the importance of the Virgo and/or 6th house as 'the sign/house of crisis in consciousness' because it lies between Leo/5th (myself) and 7th/Libra (the other) houses, and which to choose, really hit the nail on its head. I had never read of such an explanation before. The 6th house is too often referred to as 'the house of service' …..and for many with a strong Virgo emphasis it is a crisis of 'to whom'?:wink:
 

AppLeo

Well-known member
App, on the Rudhyar website you'll find some good and useful articles.

His book on The Houses is a good one. I had it until it was stolen.

Here's the story on that...

I was living in Las Cruces, N.M., but was going to move back down to old Mexico. I packed my astrological library into two large suitcases and put them on the back seat of my car, then drove down to Juarez to enjoy a big bowl of pozole. I parked almost directly across the street from the busy 24-hour restaurant, under a street light on the main street in town and went in to enjoy my meal.

When I came back out and got in my car the window wing was broken out and the suitcases gone. Lost my whole collection of astrology books.

I have always wanted to see the look on that thief's face when, after he lugged those very heavy suitcases into some nearby alley, he opened them to find nothing but astrology books...all in English.

"Que la chin....!?!"

:lol: that poor thief
 

waybread

Well-known member
Greybeard, I once dated a man who had been a Peace Corps worker in Thailand. When his gig was up, the Peace Corps made a practice of getting some basic lab work done on departing volunteers to see if they were healthy. He was asked to take a stool sample for this purpose. He placed the container in a paper bag, and was taking the bus to deliver it to the lab. A kid grabbed the paper bag and ran off with it.

Rudhyar's work mostly has very spiritual, evolutionary overtones. After I while, I thought the world's great religions did a better job of it.

Also, Rudhyar's work was often pretty sexist. Yes, he was a man of his times (1895-1985) but I really didn't need to read this stuff.
 

waybread

Well-known member
AppLeo, our house renos are nearly over but I still have most of my astro books packed up in boxes, or I would give you more excerpts. I did manage to surface his An Astrological Tryptych.

Rudhyar's style was somewhat typical for a man of his generation, in using the proper noun "Man" to stand in for humanity. Fair enough, but Rudhyar uses "Man" A Lot, and at many points Rudhyar clearly uses "Man" to mean guys-- the folks with xy chromosomes. Astrology to Rudhyar is a gendered pursuit. For example, p. 103 on the first house:

"...man realizes and enacts his manhood by liberating the plus factor, which ever creates a more, a future."

He starts this chapter with the old Man Against Nature trope, to which an earth gendered as female ("Nature is the... mother-image") is the opposite, downward pull against which Man has to liberate himself. p. 104. "Nature is everything that man must overcome in order to be more than only man."

This is the millennia-old trope of "man is to culture as woman is to nature." It doesn't wear too well today, when we are all too aware of serious human impacts on the environment.

Women show up only briefly in houses 4 and 7 and then not as subjects in their own right, but as aids to the masculine quest for enlightenment. Meanwhile, the 7th house isn't conventionally about marriage, but about the love of Christ.

Petosiris-- It's a problem. I note that traditional western astrology today has some senior female authors and practitioners, Presumably they got their heads around it, and recognized different standards for bygone periods. Isn't this how you interpret it?
 

AppLeo

Well-known member
AppLeo, our house renos are nearly over but I still have most of my astro books packed up in boxes, or I would give you more excerpts. I did manage to surface his An Astrological Tryptych.

Rudhyar's style was somewhat typical for a man of his generation, in using the proper noun "Man" to stand in for humanity. Fair enough, but Rudhyar uses "Man" A Lot, and at many points Rudhyar clearly uses "Man" to mean guys-- the folks with xy chromosomes. Astrology to Rudhyar is a gendered pursuit. For example, p. 103 on the first house:

"...man realizes and enacts his manhood by liberating the plus factor, which ever creates a more, a future."

He starts this chapter with the old Man Against Nature trope, to which an earth gendered as female ("Nature is the... mother-image") is the opposite, downward pull against which Man has to liberate himself. p. 104. "Nature is everything that man must overcome in order to be more than only man."

This is the millennia-old trope of "man is to culture as woman is to nature." It doesn't wear too well today, when we are all too aware of serious human impacts on the environment.

Women show up only briefly in houses 4 and 7 and then not as subjects in their own right, but as aids to the masculine quest for enlightenment. Meanwhile, the 7th house isn't conventionally about marriage, but about the love of Christ.

Petosiris-- It's a problem. I note that traditional western astrology today has some senior female authors and practitioners, Presumably they got their heads around it, and recognized different standards for bygone periods. Isn't this how you interpret it?

Ur renovating your house? But I see.. that is much sexist. Just pretend he refers to both men and women.
 

yuriv

Well-known member
Lool i do think by way of symbology the masculine aspect is the one on the quest while the feminine represents the Other - all that which supports and negates the Man on a quest. Just thinking of Man when it comes up in literature as a reference to that aspect may help.
 

waybread

Well-known member
Ur renovating your house? But I see.. that is much sexist. Just pretend he refers to both men and women.

Yeah-- we finally have our new floors in, but the kitchen will take another month. Meanwhile, the wall in the study where I kept my astrology books was knocked down, so they're still in boxes while we start to put furniture back and try to keep up with the sawdust.

I see no reason to "pretend" anything about Rudhyar. Have you read him yet?
 

waybread

Well-known member
Lool i do think by way of symbology the masculine aspect is the one on the quest while the feminine represents the Other - all that which supports and negates the Man on a quest. Just thinking of Man when it comes up in literature as a reference to that aspect may help.

I purchased many of Rudhar's books in the 1990s, and thought this was pretty heady stuff. Then I began to think he was actually a shallow, derivative thinker, who simply hit on a magic formula of applying theosophical, evolutionary ideas to the horoscope. Where he cites Buddha or Jesus, I realized that simply reading on Buddhism or Christianity made more sense without Rudhar's intervention.

You can't read a horoscope for somebody using Rudhyar's books, except maybe The Lunation Cycle.

As a woman myself, the feminine does not represent the Other to me. Never has, never will. If men stopped fabricating women as the Other, the world would be a much better place. Go off on your own quest, if you must, but stop turning it into some kind of gendered manhood thing, wherein the roles for women are subordinate, if not as prey or booty. (Take that latter word both ways.)
 

wilsontc

Staff member
back to astrology, to All

All,

Please get back to discussing astrology, specifically the astrology of Dane Rudhyar. If you want to discuss sexism, do it in the Chat Forum.

Back to astrology,

Tim
 

AppLeo

Well-known member
Yeah-- we finally have our new floors in, but the kitchen will take another month. Meanwhile, the wall in the study where I kept my astrology books was knocked down, so they're still in boxes while we start to put furniture back and try to keep up with the sawdust.

I see no reason to "pretend" anything about Rudhyar. Have you read him yet?

Not yet. I’ve been kind of busy doing other stuff. And I’m still waiting to see if more people say stuff about him to decide if I really want to read his work.
 

katydid

Well-known member
Dane Rudyhar is one of the biggest astrology geniuses that ever lived. Read his book on the meaning of houses. Every sentence is pure genius, in my opinion.

It is a book that you can take to the beach, and read 4 sentences and muse on them for the rest of the day. It is deep and meaningful and very profound.


read his impressive bio here:


http://www.beyondsunsigns.com/rudhyaraudioarchives.html
 
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