Article: Astrology and Past Life Therapy – Bert Esser (Is.19)

by Bert Esser

 I intend this article to be an example of the way in which we can combine the two disciplines: “past life therapy and astrology.”

1) On the one side, as we know, past life therapy makes use of an energy that is stored in our so-called cell memory system. Karma determines the direction of our successive reincarnations and the content of every new incarnation.

2) On the other side, we have astrology, which expresses our cosmic interdependence through the birth chart. The horoscope is the blue print of our capacities, abilities and the pattern of our psychic power. This builds up during previous lives, so we can consider the present horoscope as the last link of a bigger development through many lifetimes.

I always compare one life, and its corresponding horoscope, with one shot in a long film of the individual’s whole existence. In this way, the birth chart can be a reliable guide on how to find old problems, traumas and stucknesses, and how to deal with them.

This story is about a man (N.B., in the late sixties), who suffered from severe depression for many years. Doctors did not know how to help him, and the patient himself refused to be stuffed full of anti-depressants. In daily life, the patient is a crisis manager for several big companies.

When N.B. came, we first had a long chat. The next day I made his horoscope in order to make things still clearer for me, and that is what this article is going to offer us. I use the sort of astrology practiced by the Dutch Association (W.v.A.), developed 80 years ago in Holland.

The second session I had with N.B. was the crucial one; because in altered state he re-experienced in detail how he was a little local French king in the early Middle Ages. (***) (Later, I was able to trace the name of the king he mentioned, but for the sake of privacy, I will not tell it here). He won several battles during wartime and he turned out to be a sly strategist. His parents at that time were still alive, and taught him how to rule with iron fist, to avoid uproar and to protect the throne. After some time, it became obvious that in his case, heads should role. The more rigid his reign, the more blood flowed. He bred anxiety among the people and at the court with his punishing regime, and he became isolated. He had only a small circle of intimate friends, and he felt that he could not trust even his own wife, who he had shut up in a remote castle. A few years later there was yet another conspiracy hatched against him, but this time his opponents finally succeeded to imprison him. In jail, he committed suicide with a knife. When he was out of his body, he said that the lifetime he just finished was one of an extreme burden of fear and revenge. It took a long time until I got him into the Interlife, because he was wandering around on earth in despair. On my inquiry, he answered that the meaning of this incarnation was to learn what compassion is. When asked if there was any correlation with the present, he fully confirmed this—he considers himself “above” other people—and thereby tends to isolate him self. In the Interlife, he came into a void, and he wanted to ask for forgiveness from the people he had killed, but found that very difficult. At the end of the session, he still felt that guilt, covered by anger, and we needed another couple of sessions. However, he got insight into that tyrannical life, and he understood the correlation with the present.

Here we have the real core of his present problems—although his childhood was also a chain of abuse from his father’s side—it looked as though we could find the cause of his complaints in the Middle Ages.

As we know, in our existence, the Spirit (or Divine principal within us, if you wish) always wants to restore the balance that has been disturbed during a lifetime while making karma. But it would seem that most of us are not yet wise enough to balance karma straight away, and most of the time we shoot through to the opposite, from a perpetrator life to a victim life.

That is what happened here. In the present life N.B. has poor health and feels depressed and inadequate in his functioning. Besides the fact that some more sessions on past lives had to be done, the horoscope will show us now how to find the deeper cause of his disturbed balance. N.B. has Sun in Leo in the twelfth house and meanwhile an ingoing (**) conjunction with the ascendant. This gives us the image of a powerful ruler caught in a cage. The consciousness is strictly limited, and the feeling of “self” is extremely restrained. This is reinforced by Mercury (ruler of the first house, i.e. himself as an independent personality) in the twelfth house.

The Sun is making an outgoing square with Uranus in the ninth house, which means that he is permanently trying to free himself from the narrow ties, through thinking. He has ideas that could give him an open mind and a broad vision in life. However, as we will see later, just having these ideas is not enough. Meanwhile, Jupiter (power of growth and expansion) is making an outgoing conjunction with Saturn in the ninth house, which indicates that his possibilities of increasing awareness are very restricted. Therefore, this man is stuck in something.

Coming back to the Sun in Leo: this man is aware of himself and his importance, but this twelfth house position deprives him of the possibility to practice it. Here we have the dungeon of the past in France. The actual trauma is:  “They put a king in a dungeon!!”

Finally, there is a point in every birth chart that has a high value in the Dutch school of Astrology, and that is the Pars of Fortune. About this point just briefly: It gives information about the special lesson that has to be learned in the lifetime in question. It is the deeper sense of this incarnation being, as we saw, the result of a chain of lifetimes. (***) N.B. has his Pars of Fortune in the eighth house and in Aries. This means that he has to get rid of old beliefs, patterns that prevent him from growing; in other words, he has to transform his soul, the content of his psyche. The Pars of Fortune in Aries indicates that he can only do it by acting and not, for instance, by just having the right ideas about it. With Jupiter in the ninth house, this man is a thinker. Bringing thoughts into practice is different to him. He has ruler one (acting) in the twelfth house: out of reach.

This means that it is not sufficient to give him insight via regression sessions. He should make decisions during daily life in shifting his behavior as an imprisoned king. He also has to feel in his body where the trauma stems from and where the anger is coming from.

Withholding concrete steps to a new life and future causes his extreme tiredness in the present. It will be clear now that N.B. should use his crisis management skills also for himself instead of using them only for the companies where he works. The man (NB) got a deeper insight in himself after three sessions, and the depressions as well as the physical symptoms disappeared. However he still feels superior but this relates to another subject. In another past life, he was a magician who misused his skills. We see that in the long chain of our past, some lifetimes can be interrelated.

N.B. finally got a deeper insight in him self and his shadow side after a couple of sessions. The depressions as well as most of the physical symptoms (tiredness) disappeared. However, he still feels superior to society, but this relates to another subject. In several past lives, he was a magician who misused his skills. We see that in the long chain of our past some lifetimes can be interrelated.

 


Notes:

(*) My book “World History for Regression Therapists” published recently by Tasso Pub. in Holland, has a chapter on life in the Middle Ages.

(**) “Ingoing conjunction means that the faster planet (of the two) is coming a few degrees behind the slower one.

(***) We sometimes regard the Pars of Fortune as the essence of the whole birth chart, for every person.

 

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