2-2-98 FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

One of the significations of the planet Saturn, when it governs the field of career or professional life, is architecture. One of America's greatest architects, Frank Lloyd Wright, had this exact configuration. Architecture is the first, or most basic, of the arts followed by sculpture (Venus), painting (Jupiter), music (Mercury), poetry (Mars), sacred dance (The Moon) and drama (The Sun).

Wright was a man of profound and subtle intellect. Many of his admirers are, to this day, unaware of the fact that Wright was a student of Gurdjieff, the mystic who founded an esoteric spiritual discipline in the west known simply as "The Work." For Wright, it was not enough to design structures which satisfied the architectural canons of his day. Each building had to represent spiritual principles in manifestation.

Wright was actually in close intuitive harmony with the ancient science of geomancy, which the Chinese call Feng Shui and the east Indians call Sthapatya Veda. This discipline has much in common with the art of sculpture when applied to the design of buildings. Geomancy is the art of bringing an organic wholeness and aliveness to what might otherwise be nothing other than dead matter mechanically organized into some lifeless, strictly utilitarian structure.

Even today, we see this same tension in the field of architecture. Some architects favor very plain, utilitarian structures; others more organically flowing ones. Rudolph Steiner was a strong advocate of the latter approach and if you study the buildings he designed, you will get a definite sense of how the "organic school" differs from the schools derived from the principle of "pure architecture."

In archetypal language, this is a tension between a purely Saturnine approach to designing buildings and a Venusian one. The fact that Wright could be so attuned to both paradigms is more a reflection of his highly developed spiritual nature, than any specific career skills, which were Saturnine to the core.

As you enter a building or home designed by Wright, you will notice that you feel both secure and expanded at the same time. His ability to create such an effect is one of the many expressions of his genius and attunement to the spiritual principles which govern the universe.

We are fortunate that some of the ancient ways of breathing life into building structures are being resurrected in our own time. Feng Shui has been gaining a foothold in the west for the last twenty years, and more recently, Sthapatya Veda has begun to be promoted primarily through the efforts of the "TM" Movement. Unfortunately, this group is promoting a form of Sthapatya Veda which does not do justice to its ancient forms. Their approach is too generic with entrances having to face east or north, kitchens, southeast, etc. In actuality, all these rules need to be individualized in accordance with a person's own unique archetypal blueprint. For example, persons with Mars governing their spiritual nature do quite well with a south-facing main entrance -- an absolute taboo according to "Maharishi Sthapatya Veda."

So the question arises: "What do you do when there are many people who are going to share one house? Whose blueprint rules? The only answer which can be given, because it accords with actual experience, is: the dominant person in relation to that particular structure, whether the grandfather, father, grandmother, mother, uncle, or whoever. The dominance may arise by reason of money, intense interest, status, or a host of other factors.

The bottom-line is that if you know the eight fields of living and the planets governing each field, then you will know what direction and what part of the house promotes that field. This strategy is the key factor in harmonizing yourself to your environment. For example, if you want to make effective career decisions, then first know (through The Art of Multi-Dimensional Living) the planet governing this field, and the direction it signifies, and then use that part of the house, i.e. Mercury and the north central part of the house, or, if Venus, then the southeast part of the house, etc. If you want to improve interpersonal relationships, then try to engage in such relationships in that part of the house which is associated with your relating-style significator.

True inspired use of geomancy has more to do with artistic sensibility than conformity to the staid rules and regulations of Feng Shui, Sthapatya Veda, or western geomancy. Frank Lloyd Wright was a living testament to this principle.