Man alone is capable of communion with God. For to man alone among the living creatures does God speak: at night through dreams, by day through the intellect. And He uses every means to foretell and prefigure the future blessings that will be given to those worthy of Him. ~ Saint Antony the Great

The True is the good of the intellect. ~ Dante

The first stage of [esoterism] is attained when one enters conscious interaction with the beings of the angelic hierarchy. [It] does not involve knowledge of universal laws, but entering conscious interaction with the beings who know the mysteries of birth. The true horoscope will not be reached by a path of calculation but through a path of interaction with suprasensory beings. What angels have imparted to humankind is the horoscope in the true sense. ~ Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Old Testament

Free Will is the Greatest Gift

The greatest gift that in his largess God
Creating made, and unto his own goodness
Nearest conformed, and that which he doth prize
Most highly, is the freedom of the will,
Wherewith the creatures of intelligence
Both all and only were and are endowed. ~ Dante, Paradiso

Dante learns an interesting lesson on Mercury: Humanity used free will to fall into sin by Adam’s rejection of the Supreme Good. He took it on himself to know good and evil. and endured the just consequences of what was done freely. He thereby cut humanity off from higher influences, which was then left to its own devices. The two obvious solutions are unworkable.

1. One option is for humanity to save itself. That hardly seems possible since no political program, medical procedure, pharmaceutical, eugenic practice, educational technique, etc., has proved efficacious.
2. Or else, God could simply pardon Adam, but that would negate the whole point of free will.

A crime demands restitution. In this context, the crucifixion was paradoxically both a just penalty against humanity’s sin and also a crime against Christ.

Providence

A generated nature its own way
Would always make like its progenitors,
If Providence divine were not triumphant.

On Venus, the discussion turned to Providence. Francesco da Buti, who wrote a commentary on the Divine Comedy in the 14^th century, in which his lists both the negative and positive astrological influences of the planets. Regarding them, he concludes:

All are not found in one man, but a part in one, and a part in another, according to Divine Providence; and the wise man adheres to the good, and overcomes the others.

In other words, the planetary effects do not compel on their own, but all ultimately are subject to Divine Providence. A fortiori, Providence even supersedes genetic and family influences. Otherwise, without being open to higher influences, nothing could change in the world. Moreover, the wise man can pick and choose which influences to follow.

Vows

Since free will is the greatest gift to humanity, so a vow, which is the voluntary suspension of free will, is a sacrifice of great worth. The three traditional vows are obedience, poverty, and chastity. Valentin Tomberg describes their esoteric meaning:

• The vow of obedience is the silencing of personal desires, emotions and imagination in the face of reason and conscience; it is the primacy of the ideal as opposed to the apparent, the nation as opposed to the personal, humanity as opposed to the nation, and God as opposed to humanity. It is the life of cosmic and human hierarchical ordering. That which is above serves that which is below and that which is below obeys that which is above.
• The vow of poverty is the practice of inner emptiness, which is established as a consequence of the silencing of personal desires, emotions and imagination so that the soul is capable of receiving from above the revelation of the word, the life and the light. Poverty is perpetual active vigil and expectation before the eternal sources of creativity; it is the soul awaiting what is new and unexpected; it is the aptitude for learning always and everywhere.
• The vow of chastity means the resolution to live according to solar law. Although virtue is boring and vice is disgusting, that which lives at the foundation of the heart is neither boring nor disgusting. The foundation of the heart is love. The heart lives only when it loves. It is then like the sun. And chastity is the state of the human being in which the heart, having become solar, is the centre of gravity.

The True Horoscope

The power and motion of the holy spheres,
As from the artisan the hammer’s craft,
Forth from the blessed motors must proceed.
The heaven, which lights so manifold make fair,
From the Intelligence profound, which turns it.

The heavenly planets do not move on their own according to some fixed immutable physical law, but rather are moved by the angelic hierarchy. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in his commentary, points out this correspondence:

The Intelligences, ruling and guiding the several heavens (receiving power from above, and distributing it downward, taking their impression from God and stamping it like a seal upon the spheres below), according to Dionysius the Areopagite are as follows:

• The Seraphim – Primum Mobile
• The Cherubim – The Fixed Stars
• The Thrones – Saturn
• The Dominions – Jupiter
• The Virtues – Mars
• The Powers – The Sun
• The Principalities – Venus
• The Archangels – Mercury
• The Angels – The Moon

Valentin Tomberg makes this perfectly clear:

The spiritual world is not a world of laws, principles and ideas; it is a world of spiritual beings — human souls, Angels, Archangels, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim and the Holy Trinity: the Holy Spirit, the Son and the Father.

Takeaway

In order to understand your horoscope, i.e., your place in the world, your nature and destiny, it is necessary to know the spiritual beings active in your life. For example,

• Your Guardian Angel, who is an all too often neglected aspect of your life
• The archangels who influence your space: family, nation, etc.
• The principalities, the spirits of time (zeitgeist), who are guides through history

This is a partial list. Moreover, there are malignant spirits simultaneously influencing your life. Generational spirits may even attach themselves to families for years.

Anne Catherine Emmerich saw how these angelic influences are assigned at birth:

I have seen that everyone receives two spirits at birth, one good, the other evil. The good one is heavenly by nature and belongs to the lowest hierarchy; the evil one is not a devil, not yet in torments, though deprived of the vision of God.

Her vision leaves open the possibility that the evil one could even be redeemed.

Saint Diadochos of Photiki in the Philokalia shows how they can act in two ways:

Spiritual knowledge teaches us that there are two kinds of evil spirits: some are more subtle, others more material in nature. The more subtle demons attack the soul, while the others hold the flesh captive through their lascivious enticements. Thus there is a complete contrast between the demons that attack the soul and those that attack the body, even though they have the same propensity to inflict harm on mankind. When grace does not dwell in a man, they lurk like serpents in the depths of the heart, never allowing the soul to aspire towards God. But when grace is hidden in the intellect, they then move like dark clouds through the different parts of the heart, taking the form of sinful passions or of all kinds of day-dreams, thus distracting the intellect from the remembrance of God and cutting it off from grace.

Ultimate control is always under Divine Providence.