Sabian Symbol Phase 3

PHASE 3 (ARIES 3°): THE CAMEO PROFILE OF A MAN, SUGGESTING THE SHAPE OF HIS COUNTRY.

KEYNOTE: The sustaining power of the Whole, as the individual identifies himself with It’s life.

Having become objectively aware of his nature and his basic humanity, the individualizing person finds power and inner security in realizing his essential identity with the section of the universe in which he operates. He and it seem to his consciousness united in a cosmic-planetary process - in a "participation mystique." Metaphysically expressed, this is the concept of the identity of Atman and Brahman. In another sense, through his ability to identify himself with the complex of life activities surrounding him, the individual person can become truly, not only an image and representation of the Whole of his natal environment (local, planetary and perhaps eventually cosmic), but an agent through whom the Whole may express itself in an act of creative resonance and outpouring. This is the avatar ideal — the ideal of a "transpersonal" life and consciousness totally consecrated to and directed by a divine Power. This Power can also be conceived as the archetypal Self, the Christ-principle as it operates in and through an individual person and destiny who have become its outward manifestation in order to meet a collective human need.

The concept of the formal-structural identity of the universal macrocosm and the human microcosm is a very important one, as it manifests itself at many levels. It provided an inner sense of security and harmonic strength to archaic man. To the modern individual assailed by surface evidence of meaninglessness and futility it gives a feeling of participation in the vast tide of evolution. It is the answer to the tragic sense of alienation so prevalent today.

This symbol characterizes the third stage of the first five-fold sequence of phases: the stage of PARTICIPATION IN A GREATER LIFE.