The good news message of Easter

At Easter the Sun, symbol of those in authority who have been chosen to direct the enterprises of a community or nation is in the sign Aries, where it exerts its finest powers. Aries is the sign of leadership, and the Sun exalted in Aries represents leadership of the most effective kind.

And each year Easter takes place when the Moon, symbol of all the people, moves into Libra, the sign of partnership. Not only are the people partners in the great enterprise of life, but the full Moon indicates they are partners with their leaders, represented by the Sun directly across the zodiac in Aries and shedding its rays not on part, but all the earth-turned surface of the Moon. Easter is the Sunday following this full Moon and astrologically it indicates that the people of the globe, the leaders and the workers, and those gifted in various ways, have united in a common cause to make this world a better place in which to live.

The doctrine of selfishness and racial superiority is a cunning Saturn doctrine. It is based on the belief that economic superiority and skin color are the all of physical life. It exalts the individual who practices grabbing and getting and is unscrupulous in the exercise of strength and intelligence. And Saturn is the cold and unfeeling ruler of the sign Aquarius which will dominate this incoming age. Aided and abetted by the inversion of Lower-Pluto, it has already imprisoned a portion of mankind behind the stone of greed and atheistic materialism.

But Aquarius, and the Aquarian Age, has another more powerful ruler which should displace the usurper, Saturn. That ruler is clear seeing, fact-finding Uranus, which brings out the humanitarian side of the sign. And given the opportunity this influence of Uranus, a blessing from the Aquarian urn, will roll back the stone of atheistic materialism. Uranus – you see – has a penetrating light which exposes the shams on which the authority of the materialists are based, and which reveals how facts have been inverted to bolster up a doctrine which denies man a soul, and gives selfishness the place of highest virtue.

Wherever a fact of nature can be found, provided it does not indicate there are inner-plane forces, or an all-pervasive Deific Intelligence, or life beyond the tomb, these materialists grasp it. And then they follow the time-tried policy of dictators of suppressing all the inferences not favorable to their ideas by presenting only those implications that go to strengthen their theories and authority. By way of example, let us take one of the facts they so repeatedly stress, evolution.

You would think to hear them tell it, that evolution was merely the result of natural selection due to ceaseless strife and the ruthless elimination of the unfit. You would think that competition and the survival of the ruthless and strong, was tragically the whole story of evolution. You would think, from the way they phrase it, that struggle, violence and brutality was the most important thing. 

But they have suppressed the most significant part of the picture; the part which shows that, as important as competition is in progress and evolution, the principle of cooperation is even more important. They have exalted one side of the influence of Pluto, the power of coercion and have belittled the other, the power of cooperation. One would think they had never heard of specialization of parts and division of labor. 

Nature sets a limit on the size and unaided strength of any individual. The single cell, however great its struggle, and however great its competition can grow only so large and only so strong. And if this principle of brutal strife were the whole of evolution, physical life on earth would not be the complex thing it is today. But single cells found that they could gain mutual advantages by living and working together. And it was this principle of cooperation, stimulated no doubt by competition, which enabled organisms of many cells to come into existence.

In the human body, for instance, there are various types of cells, and various organs. Each type of cell does its own kind of work, and each organ, in return for the advantages it receives from the other organs and cells, performs its particular function. Through specialization some cells and some organs do work that others cannot do, and do it more efficiently than were no such specialization present. To the extent each organ and each cell contributes to the welfare of the whole body is there proper division of labor.

But when, as takes place in certain diseases, some cells begin to compete with other cells, and forget that their ultimate welfare depends on the welfare of the whole, we have a similar state in the human body as exists in the world today. We have a selfish Saturn growth disorder called cancer, which if permitted to become dominant, destroys everything.

In the evolution of civilization the family became a cooperative unit, with specialization of parts and division of labor, because through such cooperation every individual comprising the unit could gain advantages. The tribe was a further extension of the Upper-Pluto principle of cooperation and in time tribes joined cooperatively to become a nation.

And ants, bees and other social insects have also found this principle of one for all and all for one more effective than the extension of individual might. And modern industry proves its superiority by making the craftsman, who can build a machine from start to finish, obsolete. The modern assembly line, on which mass production depends, is an exemplification of the benefits that may be derived from the Upper-Pluto principle of cooperation. And Easter is symbolically an exemplification of this same principle. 

At Easter, in the spring, seeds are waiting in the earth for the benevolent rays of the sun of spiritual truth to warm them into joyous growth. But so long as the winter of selfishness and the blizzards of terror and fear prevent that Sun from shining through, the seeds will lay dormant, and may even rot in the ground.

What are these seeds? They are the germs of the harvest which will feed the New Civilization. They are the conviction that a civilization worthy of the name must provide all the people of the world with freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of expression and freedom of worship. These are the seeds which have been sown. These are the seeds which now await sufficient warmth from the Sun of truth to enable them to sprout, and grow, and mature into the four golden grains which will nourish the New Civilization, a civilization not built on the principles of competition and struggle alone, but which broadens the application of the principle that permitted life to become more complex than the single cell. The New Civilization will apply the principle of specialization of parts and division of labor which imbues all human beings with the desire to cooperate and contribute their utmost to universal welfare.

The materialist would have you think that such cooperation would nullify the principle of competition and struggle. Not so! No more so than the creature of multiple cells was able to avoid struggle. But the struggle then will not be to defeat other people. It will not be the struggle to gain unfair economic advantage. It will not be the struggle to impose an unjust and cruel will upon other men. It will be a struggle to contribute more for the benefit of the world as a single organic whole. Competition will still exist, but not the competition for food, shelter and money, but the competition with nature to compel her to provide more abundantly for all.

Those who preach the doctrine of competition to support their desire for predatory aggression fail to point out that the most valuable competition has been between individuals and nature. No person was made poorer when a new, drought-resistant strain of wheat was developed. No person was made poorer by the finding of the Comstock Lode or many other valuable deposits of metal. No one was made poorer when it was found that gasoline could be made to drive an internal combustion engine. Nor was it at the expense of others when Edison produced the phonograph and motion picture, or Marconi the wireless telegraph.

Surely people want to struggle, and need to struggle. But there is nothing in biology, and nothing in evolution, to indicate that an individual should struggle to subject other individuals. On the contrary, the evidence reveals that humanity’s progress depends upon the Upper-Pluto principle of cooperative effort; and that this struggle should be, as all groups which persist have found, to adapt the common environment to the needs of the whole. The struggle should be, if humanity is not to sink into selfishness and greed, to give increasingly of the four freedoms to all people. The seeds of these freedoms have been planted. But the blizzards of unjust aggression and economic disadvantage still howl over all the earth. Icy Saturn is still supreme in its influence over Aquarius.

But this is Easter, the time when benevolent forces gain the power to take the offensive against the cruel powers of winter, and against the harsh dogmas which Saturn has encouraged. The grip of inhuman winter must be broken. The seeds of the four freedoms must be encouraged to grow. The stone of atheistic materialism and the policy of selfish grabbing must be rolled away so that the humanitarian side of Aquarius may find expression.

The Sun has now crossed the vernal equinox. The Moon has received on all its earth-turned face the warming solar rays. The light of truth is on the increase, and it must be given opportunity to encourage the mentioned seeds to sprout and grow. The stone of materialism must be rolled away by giving the people of the world the Uranian order of facts. 

They need the facts of astrology, not merely to guide their lives into the most effective channels of cooperative effort, but to demonstrate through personal experience that those who hold that material forces are all there is, are outrageously in error. They witness these materialists vilifying astrology but after learning to judge their own birthcharts they find that astrological forces do exert a power and that progressed aspects actually operate from the inner-plane to bring events into their lives at times which can be predetermined. 

When in their own lives they have experiences with extrasensory perception that convince them that there is an inner-plane of existence, and that life persists beyond the tomb, the pronouncements of so-called authorities that psychic phenomena are all faked will be seen to be false. When a prayer is answered in an apparently miraculous manner, they will no longer heed the pronouncements of the materialists that prayers are ineffective. When through induced emotion they are personally able to tune in on the Supreme Intelligence, they no longer can be convinced no such intelligence exists. And when they have successfully used such induced emotion to change the course of their lives into more fortunate channels, they will regard it with adequate respect.

Those who hold to some constructive ideal and keep it clearly before their minds, and later find its full realization, will begin to recognize that on the inner-plane thought is a potent force, and directed thinking is a powerful aid in every enterprise.

Yes, the Sun could cross the vernal equinox alone. But without the Moon it could not bring Easter. Its light had to be reflected from the full earth-turned face of the Moon before the resurrection could be accomplished. The Moon represents no special professional group – it represents all the people of the Earth. And, to do its appointed work, the light of truth, represented by the Sun, must reach the people. Somehow the facts of astrology, the facts of extrasensory perception, the facts of induced emotion and the facts of directed thinking, must be made to reach the people. And as soon as enough of them receive the light of these Uranian facts, they will quickly cooperate. Then, and only then, can we roll away the stone and witness the resurrection of the world.

(This Crusade Talk on the Religion of the Stars was first published by Elbert Benjamine in the April 15, 1942 issue of The Rising Star. It was titled: ‘If we roll away the stone we shall witness the resurrection of the world’. At the time humanity was engulfed in World War 2. In January, 1942 US troops entered the war; Nazi leaders discussed the Jewish question; and Reinhard Heydrich’s ‘final solution’ was mass extermination in concentration camps. In February Singapore surrendered to the Japanese and the Japanese, after bombing Darwin, Australia, invaded Java. And The Church of Light in Los Angeles was doing battle with atheistic materialists and scholastic dictators who were intent on destroying astrology. The symbolism of Easter is based on natural happenings that occur in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere Easter takes place in autumn with the cold winter months fast approaching.)

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