Sabian Symbols: A butterfly made perfect by a dart through it

Pinning butterfly wings

This universal idea is best expressed through planets in

Libra 1 (0° - 1°)

BECOMING THE EMBODIMENT OF AN ARCHETYPE
Even if only in conceptual terms there exists a perfect specimen of humanity, the Christ ideal, which we can reach towards
"Understanding that we are an imperfect example of an ideal"

At this Autumnal point of the year's cycle we see the beginning of the greater darkness. Since the Spring, light has been in ascendancy and supportive of individual self-expression, and now the journey begins towards collectivisation. Through the process we eventually become aware of ourselves as part of the group consciousness of our kind. No longer a tiny speck of humanity, we identify with humanity as a whole - and this begins by identifying the form of a perfect example. The butterfly is no longer a worm and, pinned and preserved, it cannot degenerate - it is the representative archetype of all butterflies that have been transformed and learned how to fly.

Rudhyar:
IN A COLLECTION OF PERFECT SPECIMENS OF MANY BIOLOGICAL FORMS, A BUTTERFLY DISPLAYS THE BEAUTY OF ITS WINGS, ITS BODY IMPALED BY A FINE DART​

Watch the video

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In a collection, a butterfly displays the beauty of its wings, its body impaled by a fine dart

Articulation

It is both futile and poignant to articulate impermanence with gestures of beauty

Love, harmony and beauty are related. Love's highest attribute is harmony, which in turn is perfected in form as beauty. It is the interactivity between two opposite energies that sponsors these qualities on cosmic and personal levels.

Two equal forces co-exist in all things. Self-expression is the outward direction of separation that seeks exultation through exploring uniqueness; surrender is the inwardness of being that yearns to remember love, the sublime condition of merging with others.

These forces are more powerful than any other; they can be called experience and knowledge, and their mutuality of attraction is raw and passionate: desire itself. Great poise is needed to hold them in balance; otherwise what occurs tends towards either chaos or inertia.

In love, This and That are the perfect couple united in harmony, the one adapted to the other and both lost in each other. In separation, their profound yearning to reunite is shown by a constant urge to capture beauty, to pin the wings of a butterfly – preferably but impossibly in flight.

Such futility is so poignant! Yet what else to do? Why not articulate life's terrible impermanence with such a gesture of ephemeral beauty? Children build sandcastles, Tibetan monks make sculptures of butter. Beauty is fickle by nature.

In the very moment of creation, all forms are doomed to die, and what eventually remains is memory's impression. Then let us make our hearts as tender as a new-born, so they will be impressed deep and forever with the grace of beauty that only a loving heart can perceive.

Though we may pin butterflies to stem the tide of time, relentlessly the processes of ageing claw away at the surface grace of form. Yet this unwelcome imperative is so often what forces us to turn within and recognise the wiser beauty of love eternal.

Pinning butterfly wings

Advanced Level: Elven Star Analysis

​Although we can find relevance in some way to all 360 degrees, each degree resonates particularly, and mysteriously, with the 6 other points of its Elven Star and clues, from the 7 Words System, and the Sabian Journey, are shown in the text below. This first degree of the Expression "Learning" is the Affirming principle.

The scope of Libra 1 is "Understanding that we are an imperfect example of an ideal", and its means of expansion is Pisces 5, "Interact with others with integrity and lightness of being". Its preferred path, Leo 9, "The passion and commitment to create inspiring beauty", leads to its principle challenge, found in Capricorn 13, "Resonating with enduring values".

Awareness of its spiritual purpose is described in Gemini 18, "Enjoyment of solitude and the spiritual practice of self-reflection", which generates the feedback found in Scorpio 22, "Accommodating instinctual drives" and thus the evolutionary gateway offered by Aries 26, "Avoiding overwhelm by development of discrimination". 

​​(This list will differ slightly from your Elven Star points unless your degree is exact, such as Taurus 15:00 not Taurus 15:39)

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