In Aries, Hercules began on the plane of the mind in his endeavor to capture the man-eating mares, and met with failure
because he dealt with them in a personality way. He dealt with thought from the standpoint of personality; he did not work
with his problem from the standpoint of the soul. In Sagittarius he slaughtered the man-eating birds. He was back again to
the same problem on the plane of the mind where he demonstrated complete control of that which is the first thing the aspirant
to initiation has to do. We control our thoughts and consequently control our words. There is no initiation for us until we
do. In Aries he began to control thought.
In Taurus he worked down to the astral plane and came up against the problem
of sex, the demonstration of the great law of attraction in the universe in its lowest aspect. He had fairly good success.
He did control the bull and drove it into the city of the Cyclops.
In Gemini it began to dawn upon him that he was dual; he was engrossed with the problem of soul and body and how to coordinate
them. That is why Gemini fluctuates in the early stages.
In Cancer he passed on to a certain amount of mass consciousness; he took form. That is a stage of human incarnation. With
many, the fact that they are human beings with relationship to other human beings just does not enter into their consciousness
at all. In Cancer, Hercules began to get that viewpoint. The moment you get that, you capture the timid doe of the intuition,
and you begin to be intuitive, not psychic.
Then Hercules passed into that difficult sign Leo, where so many now are, and became a very forceful individual. He was
sure he could do everything, he stood alone: a stage of power. At this stage you are going to rule men, and you begin by ruling
them wrongly. You assert yourself too forcefully, and you think you are more important than you are.
In Virgo, Hercules became conscious, not of soul and body placed in juxtaposition to each other, but of the fact that latent
within himself was the infinite Christ; that the personality, the form side, was nurturing a beautiful hidden something, and
his eyes were opened.
In Libra he went through a difficult stage of achieving equilibrium, a very abstruse sign in many ways because the man
is neither the soul nor the body. Libra is the balancing on the physical plane of the pairs of opposites. He has balanced
them so much that he does not feel that he is getting anywhere.
In Scorpio, on the astral plane, he takes up again the work begun in Taurus, completes it and clears away the great mire,
the great illusion and stands free with the goal clear in front of him.Gemini is the opposite of Sagittarius; Gemini duality;
Sagittarius unity, the one-pointed going forward, the unified personality, conscious of the soul, determined to enter the
sign Capricorn where the great transition is made out of the fourth into the fifth or spiritual kingdom.Sagittarius is the
archer on the white horse, sometimes pictured as the centaur with the bow and arrows. In these two modes of picturing - the
centaur half human and half animal, the archer on the white horse, half human and half divine - you have the whole story.
A white horse is always the symbol of divinity. Christ came forth riding on a white horse. There you have Sagittarius in the
Book of Revelation. It is a double sign, and whenever you have a double sign you have a problem.
In Sagittarius, just as in Scorpio Hercules took up and completed the work started in Taurus, he took up and completed
the work started in Aries. In Aries he was dealing with thought at its source. In this sign he demonstrates complete control
of thought and speech.Sagittarius has sometimes been called "the sign of the effect of Scorpio". The moment we have freed
ourselves from illusion, that moment we enter into Sagittarius and we see the goal. We have never really seen it before, because
between us and the goal there is always to be found that cloud of thought forms that prevents us from seeing it.Silence
Sagittarius is the sign preparatory to Capricorn and it is called in some ancient books "the sign of silence". In ancient
mysteries the newly admitted brother had to sit in silence, he was not allowed to walk or speak; he had to be, to work and
to watch, because one cannot enter the spiritual kingdom, or climb the mountain of Capricorn, until there has been restraint
of speech and control of thought. That is the lesson of Sagittarius: restraint of speech through control of thought. That
will keep us busy, because after you have given up using the ordinary forms of speech, such as gossip, then you have to learn
restraint of speech about things spiritual. You have to learn what not to say about the life of the soul, not to talk about
things for which people may not as yet be ready.
Right use of thought, restraint of speech, and consequent harmlessness on the physical plane, result in liberation; for
we are imprisoned not by some outside force that holds us there, but by what we ourselves have said and done. The moment we
no longer set up wrong relations with people by the things we say that should not have been said, the moment we stop thinking
things about people that we should not think, little by little those ties that bind us are severed, we are freed and we can
climb the mountain like the goat in Capricorn.
It has been asked: "Must we never make karma for ourselves or do anything that would tie us to any human being, because
as long as we tie ourselves to any human being, we have got to go on reincarnating?" Let us tie ourselves to humanity by service,
by love, and by disinterested thought. Let us not tie ourselves by critical thoughts, self-pitying thoughts, or by gossiping
speech.Don’t be good, don't be harmless, don't serve merely in order to get away from it all. Stay with humanity as
Christ does, until the last pilgrim has found his way home.The Chrysalis Symbol
Sagittarius has been called the chrysalis stage, in which man is neither one thing nor the other. In the chrysalis you
have the caterpillar, the chrysalis and the butterfly. The caterpillar, we are told, reincarnates five times; it sloughs its
skin five times, five is the number of man. Then there comes that curious happening in the life of the caterpillar where there
is a complete change, and from a thing crawling about prompted by desire, eating all the time, there comes the stage of the
chrysalis. What goes on in that chrysalis stage is a most mysterious happening. We are told that inside the hard shell of
chrysalis which the caterpillar has constructed, there is nothing but a fluid. Every single thing has broken down and in that
fluid are what are called three centers of life, and because of the interplay between those three local points of energy,
a change goes on, a rebuilding, until there emerges out of the period of silence, a wonderful butterfly. It is almost as though
in the chrysalis there were three aspects of divinity symbolized and working to a pattern, the Christ pattern.
Consider what goes on in the life of the individual in Sagittarius. There has been a complete breaking down of everything
in Scorpio; everything has been reduced to fluid, for Scorpio is a water symbol. In the life of the aspirant of today, there
has been a complete breaking down of everything. As one person said, there is nothing left to live for, there is nothing interesting
enough to pull one through existence.
Why? Because you are an aspirant, a disciple; it is the best indication you can have of your status on the ladder of evolution.
Everything has broken down and you know it. But the three aspects of divinity are still there in the fluid; and they will
work and the pattern is there. The chrysalis stage is Sagittarius. It is interesting to carry the sequence of thought or achievement
from Scorpio into the power and success developed in Sagittarius, for it is a sign of power. [164]
The true Sagittarian is a very potent person; potent because it is the sign of silence; potent because it is the sign of
one-pointedness and the goal is seen for the first time clearly; potent because it is the period immediately preceding the
birth of the Christ.The Spirit of Truth
Sagittarius is the spirit of truth; it is the sum of all Truth growing out of individual revelation. Now the usual happening
when there is an individual revelation is sectarianism; an illustration of Sagittarius misused. I had a revelation; God has
revealed this to me. I immediately impose upon my fellow men my personal interpretation of truth. I see no truth but my truth.
I am an aspirant, but all aspirants must interpret truth as I see it; if not, they are not aspirants. You must believe in
reincarnation because it is the truth; you must believe in the Masters of Wisdom. One-pointed, yes. But a little bit of the
truth. Just so much of the truth as your poor little brain can grasp, and yet such a tremendous revelation to you that you
think it is all of the truth.
In Sagittarius, the first of the great universal signs, we see truth as the whole when we are using arrows of thought rightly.
I will say this is for me, my formulation of the truth, because it helps me to live. Other groups use other terminologies
and only as I can grasp my brother's way of looking at the truth is it possible for me to have the vision.
That all the of the various truths form one Truth is what is realized in Sagittarius, and you cannot go through the gate
at the foot of the mountain until you have seen where your little bit of truth forms part of the greater group mosaic. The
Spirit of Right
Sagittarius has been called the sign of the spirit of right, growing out of the contentions of the previous eight signs.
When I am really functioning in Sagittarius, I will have learned to discriminate between right and wrong. I will know what
is right for myself, but I will also have learned this lesson: that my right may be my brother's wrong, and my brother's wrong
may be my right; that it is impossible for me to say what is right for you because we all have different equipment, different
heredity, different traditions, different racial tendencies. We are all so diverse.
I know what is right for me and I will endeavor to live by my right, my idea of right. I do not know what is right for
you, but I will give you the credit for doing the best you know. If we could assume that attitude towards each other, the
spirit of harmlessness, control of thought and restraint of speech would emerge in the world and we would escape from our
world problems. The world will never be put right by fighting, but by right thought, a soul process. In Scorpio we have conviction
of sin; in Sagittarius we have conviction of right.Three Gifts
There are three signs of beneficent outpouring in the zodiac. One is Aries from which there is pouring out upon us the
gift of existence. The gift of existence in Aries is the wonder of being a human being.
In Leo, there is the outpouring of the gift of opportunity. I am an individual. I shall use life for myself, if I am a
little Leo; or I shall use the opportunity to open the gates for other people, if I am a greater Leo.
In Sagittarius, there is the outpouring of the gift of power. Do you feel able to have power? A true aspirant is one who
works in the world of powers and forces. We cannot be trusted to yield power until Sagittarius has done its work. Restraint
of speech and control of thought has to be mastered before the soul becomes potent enough. When we love enough and are harmless
enough, then the gates of heaven and hell will be put into our hands, but not before.
Let us begin to love, not sentimentally, but through beginning really to understand human beings, to identify ourselves
with them and love them. You can know what a human being is, with all his faults, and you can love him; not from a superior
standpoint of saving "poor thing, some day he will be where I am", but from the standpoint of saying, "I have been just like
that", or "I am just like that".
The gift of existence, the gift of opportunity, and the gift of power are the three three great gifts illustrated in the
zodiac.Details of the Story
We read that the marshes of Acadia were filled with man-eating birds, pictured in ancient books as ferocious storks, the
birds of Stymphalus. They were three in number; three major birds, but there were many small ones. They were wasting the land,
but they could not be seen; they were hidden in the brush, in the undergrowth, doing damage, but they could not be located.
As usual, Hercules rushes to the land of Acadia and determines to rid the land of these man-eating birds. We are told he
was very clever in the way he did it. He had freed himself from illusion and Athena had given him some cymbals which he clashed
so loudly that the birds arose out of the marsh into the air and tried to fly away; then he mounted on his winged horse and
shot them with his arrows. It is a wonderful story.
Marshes are a symbol of the mind plus emotion, Hercules discovers that although he may be an aspirant and he may have triumphed
in Scorpio, he still possesses an emotional nature, and he finds that the birds of Stymphalus, especially three of them, are
of a man-eating kind and that he must do something about it.
Picture his reaction, the conqueror discovering that he is a devastating force; that by his words and thoughts he is doing
harm. Remember this, the further on you go along the path of return, and the more you function as a spiritual entity, the
more potent you become and the more harm you can do.
You are forceful, you are wielding power, you are probably the center of your group. If you are an aspirant, if you are
a disciple, thought and speech activity is your main enterprise. You weigh your thoughts because there is potency back of
your thought, and when you think wrongly the harm you do is much more potent than the harm that a less evolved person does.
We must get the birds out of the marshes and into the clear air where we can see them and conquer them. The birds that
did the most harm were three in number: cruel gossip; selfish talk; and casting of pearls before swine. What does that mean?
Gossip is "spiritual murder". How many lives have been wrecked by cruel gossip? There is an unbroken law that if you gossip
you will be gossiped about. We get what we give. If you give service you will get service; kindness, kindness; love, love.
If humanity is mistreating you, search yourself and find out where you are at fault. To him who is harmless all enmity ceases.
When I achieve harmlessness in thought, word and deed, then I will have no problems. The fact that we have problems presupposes
our harmfulness.Talking about oneself, we are always occupied with our own problems, our own affairs. Casting pearls before
swine means talking about spiritual things for which the hearers are not ready. As Sagitarians, we are trying to bring harmony
into our lives, trying to lead the "altar" life, seeking to contact wisdom. Begin with thought and speech, and begin today.
