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.In a very real sense, astrology is derived from the symbolism of numbers.It is a kind of numerology; or, as I once said, of "arithmosophy" — an applied wisdom of numbers.When astrologers link closely the twelve Houses of a chart with the twelve signs of the zodiac, or divide the projection of the ecliptic (the Earth's orbit) upon the galactic star-filled spaces into twelve constellations, all that they do is to refer the result of a twelvefold division of this ecliptic to the postulated symbolic meanings of the numbers one to twelve.We do the same thing when we divide the human body into twelve areas of organic functioning, or the Earth's globe into twelve longitude-zones, or any other type of zones.For some not too easily explainable reason man, in all times, has found some apparently universal meaning in numbers, series of numbers, numerical correlations, magic squares and in the results of many kinds of numerical operations.God geometrizes — the Greeks said.The Hebrew Kabbalah, and similar Indian and Chinese systems, are based on numbers.India apparently discovered the mysterious no-number, 0 — and this probably correlated with the development of a new and transcendent approach to existence and to the universe.Thus many systems; yet a quite fundamental sequence of meanings connected with defined sequences of numbers related to the structural unfoldment of a variety of existential processes.Number, to the modern mind, refers to the frequency of vibrations; and we explain the whole universe now in terms of vibrations and waves.Any process implies a numerable sequence of structured phases.No one should mistake the first for the second or the fourth or the seventh phase; this, whatever be the type of material substance or mental concept the process deals with.The important point, however, is that we should define well the process as a whole and its space-time field of operation, when we are studying the sequence of its phases.The danger lies in the fact that we tend to see the particular process we are analyzing as being the life-process.This is the great trouble with all types of human knowledge and in particular with astrological systems.Every culture has considered itself the center of the world of Man.Every people has, subtly or crudely, felt, at least at one time of its development, to be the Elect People, the Vanguard of Civilization; and our Western civilization has indeed not failed to speak of "Civilization," as if there were no other civilization — at least until the important and revealing work of Arnold Toynbee.Most men believe there is only one Civilization that counts, one Science, one Astrology: their own.They see the earth-structure absolutely anchored at the Greenwich meridian, and claim, with intense conviction, that "civilization moves westward." Nevertheless there may very well have been at some more or less distant time an "eastward" movement that sent the remnants of the fabled, yet most probably very real, Atlantean civilization across Europe, Africa and the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt, the Near East, and perhaps to South India.Should we really speak of only one wave of civilization?The March of CivilizationA number of astrologers have done so, believing that one could trace the westward progress of great centers of civilization in terms of the precessional rhythm of one degree every 72 years.If one considers it feasible to project the constellations of the zodiac upon the Earth- globe in a permanent, "fixed" manner, then the signs of the zodiac can be said to progress westward; that is to say, the vernal equinox point is seen to move one degree every 72 years on the surface of the globe, completing the round-the-world trip not in "80 days" but in less than 26,000 years.This long round-the-globe advance would be what I once called, in a series of articles in the American Astrology magazine (1946-47) "The March of Civilization".I was careful, however, to point out (1) that we should not think that great historical events, as factors in the rise of civilization, occurred only at the assumed passage of the moving equinox point (the "crest" of the wave of civilization) over a particular zone of longitude, and (2) that, if the location of this moving wave-crest at a particular time did not correspond to a most significant high-point in the evolution of the mind and in the cultural achievements of the people living in that location, then the whole scheme was meaningless, or the given point of departure was obviously wrong
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