PREFACE Since his first publication "Overcoming Destiny Through Astrology" (1925), the author of this "Astrological Anthropology" has been known in astrologically interested circles as a pioneer of a new approach, dedicating his life's work to establishing an anthropological foundation for the controversial knowledge of a relationship between humans and celestial bodies. A series of books, the most essential of which appeared in quick succession from 1939 to 1941, familiarized many readers with his attempt to introduce the traditional worldview of astrology into modern thinking while simultaneously purging it of overgrown accretions. In this work, Thomas Ring undertakes anew to make the categories of astrological interpretation comprehensible and to determine the place and limits of statements that, in his view, are possible from the birth constellation. Addressing the problem of fate and freedom that has always occupied him, he contrasts the "distorted image of a fatalistic vulgar astrology" with the view that the horoscope calculated for the time and place of birth reflects a structural order of formative forces and represents a kind of framework in which the combination of hereditary and environmental influences takes place. This structural order, the "cosmotype," is described with memorable and didactically fortunate concepts as the formal basis of individual self-realization, which forms over the course of development in an interplay of necessity and freedom. The emphasis of this "Astrological Anthropology" lies in the characterological realm. Comparisons with the views of modern psychology and depth psychology illuminate the problematic nature of astrological interpretation categories and sometimes establish surprising cross-connections with new insights, e.g., with the dissolution of rigidly labeling concepts of characteristics into typical drive and process forms. One can read this thought-provoking work with great benefit in an "as-if attitude" and leave open the question of the reality of the relationships between humans and celestial bodies. The author seems to expect this, as he does not attempt to persuade to a different attitude through empirical evidence, statistics, or recourse to his many years of practical counseling work carried out in complete silence. With intuitive certainty, he presents a coherent method and convincingly demonstrates the fruitfulness of astrology's symbolic interpretation categories for understanding human nature. Critics and opponents of astrology, who see it only as a ridiculous superstition, usually overlook the fact that secular psychological experience has been deposited in astrological symbols. Thus, the signs of the zodiac represent a dozen human types and life forms that have been preserved with astonishing freshness through the centuries as the oldest typology. Together with other astrological building blocks, the planets as symbols for the basic forces of being, the aspects as forms of their harmony and disharmony, they represent an entire character theory projected onto the firmament, the depth of which poets have always known and whose rootedness or reflection in the archetypes, the guiding images of the unconscious, C. G. Jung convincingly demonstrated. Of course, one cannot ultimately avoid the problem of whether the astrological worldview involves merely "projected" or naturally given relationships. This question is open to experimental investigation, for it must be possible to determine whether those trained in astrology and psychology can make statements about a person's essential structure from the birth constellation that exceed the realm of chance hits. One can also conduct statistical studies on the frequency of coincidence of cosmic factors with specific characteristics of human groups, independent of statements from the birth constellation. Choisnard, K. E. Krafft, v. Klöckler, and others have worked in this direction. Recently, a French psychologist, Michel Gauquelin, in his book "L'influence des astres. Etude critique et experimentale" (1955), presented a broadly based study that, without reference to astrological tradition, claims statistically significant correlations between cosmic factors and specific professional groups. One can also examine a larger number of people who, as "cosmic twins," have the same or nearly the same horoscope for their similarities - a crucial experiment that could be very informative but requires thorough methodological work. More than 300 years of empirical science in the modern sense have apparently not been able to achieve immunization against the claims of astrology, which must be simply absurd for the worldview of classical natural science. It has also been shown that the superstitious misuse of astrology, of which the nonsensical newspaper oracles are only one of the most visible symptoms, cannot be effectively countered with a scientific anathema. New ways must be taken that help solve the social hygiene problem from the matter itself: one must apply the methods of empirical science in an appropriate, objective manner to the controversial claims of astrology, even if such an undertaking must reckon with the objection that it is an attempt on an unsuitable object. From an epistemological perspective, there are no a priori reasons that could prove the impossibility of a non-causal correspondence theory in the sense of a newly interpreted astrology. Astrological belief is a sociological reality with manifold manifestations that must be taken seriously as such. It ranges from the lowest superstition to responsible engagement with its content by a large number of discerning people - including a whole series of psychotherapists - who practically deal with the birth constellation as a diagnostic aid. It remains a bone of contention in fruitless debates until unbiased investigations make it possible to decide what is speculation and deception, what is provable fact, and what is intuitive art of interpretation that cannot be adequately grasped by the analytical methods of science. Years of intellectual exchange with the author of the present work and his often surprising achievements in interpreting birth constellations have contributed significantly to my advocacy for such a research task and its initiation at my Freiburg Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health. To investigate a claim, one must know it and adjust the methods of empirical verification to it. Thomas Ring's "Astrological Anthropology" is in any case excellently suited to inform about the nature of astrology and to eliminate the misunderstandings that turn a profound correspondence theory between macrocosm and microcosm into miserable, fatalistic fortune-telling. Freiburg i/Br. Prof. Dr. Hans Bender QUESTIONS BEFORE THE GATE As on the day the world received your light, The sun stood greeting planets in the sky, You grew forthwith, advancing day and night, By laws that set your path as time went by. This is your essence, from which you can't take flight, As seers and prophets did long prophesy; No force of time can break or rend apart The molded form that lives within your heart. JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE First stanza "Orphic Primal Words" It is not necessary to begin with this preliminary chapter to learn the elements and method of astrology. The questions addressed here only arise in full sharpness with some familiarity with the subject. But in content, they are preliminary questions, from whose answers the nature of astrology as a study of human nature becomes comprehensible and the correct form of application of its technique emerges. Those who agree with me that any character statement about a person is already an intervention in them will start right here. With such a controversial topic as astrology, they only find access and entry through the discussion of these questions. However, it would exceed the scope of a textbook to unfold all the arising problems in full breadth; furthermore, it would deprive the book of its character as a tool for further research if one were to believe all problems solved. I therefore limit myself to the main questions that have to do with the handling of astrological concepts and through whose clarification the method develops further. SYMBOL, PRINCIPLE AND CORRESPONDENCE The immediate language of the soul is that of images. Images suggest, signify. They unveil a certain meaning suggestively and at the same time conceal it for the intellect, whose concepts deal with the world of sensory phenomena. The task of the intellect is to classify concepts of empirical things into a logically conceived reality, in which things proceed according to cause and effect or according to the relationship of purpose and means. In contrast, the pre-logical thinker, the early human, grasped in symbols - "the conglomerated" - what addressed and moved him. In the deeper layers of the soul, we have remained such early humans. Our current depth psychology teaches that images of the unconscious come to the aid of a consciousness pushed into a bottleneck. Such images, mirrored in dreams and waking fantasies, sometimes contain symbols that once stood godparent to the origin of astrology; they spontaneously appear in people who are unaware of the cultural-historical past of these same archetypes. One could conclude from this that these are purely inner-psychic realities, whose meaning is enclosed in their psychic function. There are views that avoid questions going beyond this and understand astrology as a primordial logic of images and associations that has nothing to do with objectively viewed nature on the one hand, and abstract concepts on the other. However, astrological statements are made from a measured image that was determined from empirical objects, those of natural science. Inevitably, the question of reality arises in the field of view of our present overall knowledge. What helps us at this point is reason in its peculiar task of making individual findings of the intellect comprehensibly coherent. The language of thought captures its ultimate contents in principles, concepts of the initial and first, from which other things are derived and by which they are determined. Insofar as the astrological images say something about empirical realities or connect to them, equivalent principles offer themselves for a translation into rational word usage. This sheds light on the origin of these images. For example, the ancient peoples visualized that which in astrology goes by a planet name and is an interpretative symbol, archetypally in the form of a god, the same one whose name astronomers retained to designate the respective planet. A formal intellect that only advances to the determination of the planet-god-interpretation symbol analogy and cannot accommodate such a connection in its worldview has the concept of "name fetishism" ready to dismiss astrology. However, the content circumscribed by the interpretative symbol coincides with a principle under which we comprehend a series of natural and mental processes, without having to causally relate these. If now an actual connection between the two end links of the analogy chain is demonstrable, the middle link also receives a different illumination than usual. It then becomes conceivable to us that the ancient myth, in attempting to represent certain archetypal contents that we recognize from principles, did not fantasize so much out of the void. In any case, the assumption of a 'name fetishism' becomes nonsensical. Striving for answers to the question of reality, we do not pursue the cross-connections to ancient myth further, but stick to the said principles. They are principles of organic being. Through these, we comprehend what can be stated from "planets" as an expression of inherent "forces" of the living. However, the sensually foreground of the phenomena touched upon must not obscure the principle of such a force by making us think of mechanical causality. The principle in the background contains what these phenomena "live" from in the truly organic sense, their role for a whole of life. Thus, we can speak of "holistic forces" common to all living things, their expression is an ordering one, integrating into the whole. As different as the nature, form, and mode of existence of organisms are, there are the same principles for their structure, their preservation, and varied realization as a whole. They appear differently. In view of the manifold appearance of human nature and life - on the different levels of being, we will find countless phenomena summarized under one and the same principle. In this principal coherence, they are considered as "correspondences". Two phenomena thus placed side by side need not stand in the relationship of cause and effect; rather, their logical determination concerns a basic necessity of the interaction of all parts in the whole, the role assigned to them as members. Different in form, material composition, and density are, for example, the bark of a tree, the chitin armor of an insect, the skeleton of a vertebrate. Under the principle of a force that provides support and protection for the living being - initially viewed in terms of material structure - they are analogous to each other. They correspond, each in its own way, to a basic necessity of organization. This principle remains irrevocably the same, whatever forms of application life may develop. This includes that in the differentiation and advanced division of tasks of higher organisms, multiple correspondences of the same principle appear. In terms of evolutionary history, the skeleton represents an inventive grip of nature, which moved protection and support, provided by external parts in crustaceans and shellfish, into the body interior. This made it possible to shape the outer closure as a more or less firm skin. It is a long way from the armoring of lizards through various forms of leathering, hair, feathering to human skin; in elasticity and permeability, we understand this from other principles. Only insofar as our skin also fulfills a task of protection is it considered a correspondence of the mentioned principle. Furthermore, the division of tasks in the manifold shaped organism is related to the fact that there are correspondences that are more or less favored in rank. Thus, each organ has its wall of denser or looser tissue, depending on the task assigned to it in the organ association. This wall delimits it against the rest except for the gates of the flowing functional context, it protects it as a partial structure and maintains it in constant form. However, our stomach wall, which has to enclose the only free mineral acid occurring in the body - something foreign to the organic, so to speak, the outside world - stands in a different relation to the total organism than, for example, the skin of the gallbladder and is considered a preferred correspondence. Understanding connections through principles answers the question of the methodical applicability of correspondences. Some tend to believe that only intuition can handle the "logic of images and associations" and correctly apply correspondences. For this, the early human in us must be reawakened, so to speak. Certainly, no science can do without intuition. It progresses when those who have intuitions are at the height of scientific thinking. However, if we give more than necessary to irrationalism, it invokes the already vigilant mistrust of causal understanding against thinking in analogies. Accustomed to seeing events as effects of causes, some critics consider acausal connections between things inadmissible. They remember faulty analogical conclusions, equating non-corresponding things, not thinking of holistic life requirements and what belongs together in meaning. Believing in an objectively unfounded transfer of meanings, they might dismiss the astrological method of interpretation as "delusion of reference." In any case, it's a warning about the subjective source of error, to align things that are felt to be analogous in some way under such symbols! The keyword "Saturn" was mentioned, indicated by the symbol ♄ , from whose placement in the measurement image the interpretation proceeds. We continue to use such symbols in the text to learn how to work with astrological content. The cited sentence also shows a peculiarity of the symbol, that its meaning can jump from one level of being to another. However, the correspondences must be thought through according to rank and scope of validity. The skin removed from an animal and processed into leather, the stripped bones of a carcass are torn from their immediate organic context. If a secondary, material relationship to the same symbol adheres to them, they now switch, under human use, into a different realm with different standards. The basic necessity of protection and support of a whole, the organic principle ♄ , also applies to the sociological functional context. With all due respect to leather workers and bone collectors, no one will claim that they are as significant for the existence of human society as the guardians of formulated law and order, bureaucracy and statesmen! At most, one is of the opinion that "ossifications" also occur with these, whereby the spirit of language uses a correctly chosen word in a negative sense. There are, in fact, healthy fulfillment of tasks as well as their downsides, positive and negative correspondences for each principle. The focus of our book is on the correspondences of the mental and spiritual level. The physiological would require a separate presentation and is only touched upon here and there for comparison. We see the psyche embedded in the larger context of life. Here, form-creating tendencies of nature sometimes reappear translated into analogous forms of inner behavior, phenomena that may seem fantastic to an imagination-less understanding to bring under the same denominator. Thus, we see the "shell" tendency of lower organisms recurring in certain encapsulations, incrustations, and inclusions, primitive forms of mental self-protection, while the "skeleton" tendency represents a higher form in the solidification and bracing of principles, forming an inner framework of attitude, so to speak. In addition to such inner- world correspondences, there are also outer-world ones - concerning the individual as a social and environment-related being. On the one hand, they are projections of individual life; on the other hand, they contain fateful interconnections. The essence of interpretation is to clarify in which corresponding forms such a principle - on the level under consideration and in the narrower functional context - must express itself to fulfill its purpose. It is important to find what is applicable in the individual case. If one is practiced through descriptive presentation and one's own observation, if one has grasped the characteristic of what is expressing itself, the "force," then one recognizes it unmistakably in the obvious disguises. Elements of the modification of these forces methodically guide the accuracy of interpretation: the circle of style forms and the circle of motifs, as well as the relationships of forces in holistic interplay. This outlines the structure of our astrological elementary teaching from the matter itself. THE COSMOTYPE The personality that psychologists typically deal with presents itself in a state of mind shaped by individual history. While observed behaviors and interests are built upon dispositional basic attitudes towards existence, they also contain, overlaying these, what has been acquired from objects or circumstances of a specific milieu or changing environments, namely habits, identifications, and imitations, as well as self-alienation through the adoption of externally introduced views. In any case, the predispositions have developed unevenly. In the astrological measurement image, only the dispositional substructure of all this is present. It contains basic attitudes towards objects in a "possible" milieu. The actual milieu is not indicated therein. To bring an extreme but occasionally occurring case: with two births at the same minute and place, two different personality images can form from the same substructure, depending on the different milieu in which the people concerned grow up, depending on the objects and circumstances through which their personality is realized. This simultaneously defines a limit to the statements of astrological diagnostics. It is not within its power to make statements about what environmental influences, milieu conditions, education, and collective destinies add to the dispositional substructure. These facts must be given in broad outlines to enable probability conclusions about the developed personality. Dispositional substructure is now usually understood as inheritance. After the doctrine of the newborn's soul as a blank slate, according to which its individuality would arise only from processed "environmental inscriptions," failed in its initial absoluteness, the search for hereditary dispositions began. Rather, based on the research of hereditary biological laws in plants and animals, everything not derivable from the milieu was declared as inherited predisposition. The most fruitful approach has proven to be the consideration of both according to the relationship between "genotype" and "phenotype." The genotype or hereditary image denotes what is noticeable independent of environmental influences. In the individual, only a part of this is expressed in characteristics, while the remaining, latent predispositions are further transmitted in heredity. The phenotype or appearance image denotes what is individually manifest and promoted in its development by favorable environmental conditions or hindered by unfavorable ones. These environmentally induced modifications are not inheritable. Only under fundamentally changed living conditions do mutations sometimes occur, hereditary leaps, meaning spontaneous and inheritable changes of the predisposition itself. Can - one might think - that dispositional substructure expressed in the astrological measurement image contain anything other than inheritance? Already Kepler spoke of the "kinship of nativities" between parents and children, K. E. Krafft investigated such cases according to the rules of probability calculation, and practitioners are repeatedly confronted with a non-coincidental connection. Nevertheless, strictly speaking, we are facing another limit to the statements of astrological diagnostics: the actual hereditary substance is not in the measurement image. In summary: neither inheritance nor environment are substantially contained in the measurement image, but relational forms to both are indicated. Its elements should be understood under such concepts. They require certain conditions of the application case to describe reality accurately beyond a certain schematism. We determine the methodologically permissible astrological statements according to the formula "if-then," meaning, if this or that specific family inheritance and milieu is present, then these or those correspondences occur. Genius or pathological degeneration further modify them. This situation raises the question of whether a third factor that relates inheritance and environment must necessarily be given. Genetic research replaced the vague concept of "parental mixture" with evidence of divisibility into independent hereditary units that recur or enter into combinations in crossbreeding according to a numerical key. What is inherited are not finished characteristics, but specific ways of reacting to environmental influences. They form the prerequisite for the different development of living beings under the same influences. On the other hand, the study of environmental influences on humans demonstrates how individual moments of education, nutrition and lifestyle, certain impressions, etc. influence his behavior in a modifying way. Here, the analytical perspective is more clearly referred to its limits. It soon became clear that humans always react to environmental factors as a whole and thus from the context of meaning in which they experience the individual moments. Genetic research grasps this whole only in the summative concept of "set of predispositions." While it is possible to prove individual determining elements of this whole that cannot be explained environmentally as hereditary, even the best-conceived collaboration between two analytical methods cannot possibly hit upon the essence of the whole, which is "more than the sum of its parts." The higher the degree of diversity in our knowledge of humans rises, the more urgent becomes the question of the unity of the essential structure. Here, what astrology brings offers itself as a framework-like order. It makes comprehensible the proportional connection of individual determining elements to the whole. The same hereditary, the same environmental component becomes something different through the way it is built into the structure. Between inheritance and environment, we see an ordering image inserted, containing the essential role distribution of the individual determining pieces - reaction mode or reaction trigger - the "plan" of predispositions. Applying the word "cosmos" as the epitome of a whole ordered according to inner laws, we speak of the cosmotype, as it were the transformer between genotype and phenotype. To understand the necessity of the cosmotype from its appropriate level of being, we must raise the question of the categories of the organic as fundamentally as Nicolai Hartmann does in his theory of categories. He points to the sore spot of life research. We tend to view the organism either causally and mechanically from matter, with categories of the underlying layer of being, or teleologically, under purposes and final goals that are apparent to us in the superordinate spiritual layer. Accordingly, the dispute between mechanistic and vitalistic conceptions of life phenomena reflects a categorical missing of what it's about, from below or from above. It would be too extensive to elaborate on this problem here. I touch on it to characterize the layer of being on which I - deviating from previous astrology - see the reality of the mentioned forces anchored. It would be closer to familiar ways of thinking to see in the cosmotype an ideal order, a kind of entelechy of vitalistic conception. In contrast, I think of an immediately life-creating order, in which the forces tending towards wholeness and form are included, forces that are viewed as archetypes (powers of the unconscious) from the initially superimposed psychic layer, thought of as ideas (ultimate principles of being) in the spiritual layer. This has important consequences for the handling of astrological elements. We will therefore often deal with N. Hartmann's theory of categories; here it suffices for now to recognize an independent validity of the organic form of order vis-à-vis hereditary or environmentally given individual determining pieces. We later find all elements - the system of holistic forces and their forms of relationship as well as the two cyclical systems that show the living being in interaction with its environment - always treated in principle as categories of the organic layer. The idea of transcendence implies that these elements extend from there into the psychic and spiritual layers. With differently oriented correspondences, they are included in them. Whether and to what extent the independence of the cosmotype may be asserted can naturally be best studied in identical twins. Here, absolute genetic equality is present. However, the births do not occur exactly simultaneously, but one after the other with a gap of normally at least ten minutes, as the maternal organs contract again after the first act of expulsion before the second begins. This can already result in notable differences for the fine structure of the measurement image, which depends on the daily rotation of the Earth. However, this sets as a condition for such investigations that the technique of fine differences must be fully mastered. Despite its great successes, previous twin research finds itself in distress at one point. The striking similarity of identical twins in structural build and physical characteristics as well as in main psychological dispositions is contrasted by more or less large psychological differences. In cases of equally similar environments, the various attempts at explanation - willful differentiation of the pair against each other, construction of an "intrauterine environment," etc. - cannot capture differences that have an essentially typical character from the beginning. From the cosmotypic fine structure, however, insights into these variants of the otherwise concordant essential structure emerge. The case of coarser dispersion is that of fraternal twins. The same rules apply to it to a somewhat lesser degree as in the first-mentioned example: genetic difference, consequently different physical characteristics and psychological reaction patterns, but within the framework of similar main dispositions. It concerns genetically conditioned deviations from the basic structure, but if one goes into this, one will recognize the equality of the cosmotype. Conversely, one sees the family type individually modified according to the cosmotype, up to far-reaching similarities in form, constitution, and temperament even in "horoscope twins" not related by blood. Released from this mutual conditioning, the cosmotype represents merely a structure of forms. Its elements have - expressed in Aristotelian terms - mirrored on the idea of entelechy - a formal, not a material character. They concern the individual holistic structure, the relationship and connection of parts, their ordered arrangement to each other, as it establishes itself at every level and stage, through the exchange of materials by life dynamics. These "materials" form the content of the "correspondences." If one abstracts from their imagery, the principles crystallize out, with whose help the whole becomes intellectually comprehensible. Only their individual order relationship is not a conceived one, but a naturally given one - mathematically determined via the detour of "celestial bodies" - therefore we may see these principles named as the general formative elements in which individuation takes place. It is in the nature of things that in this way the individual is understandable not only in his isolation and uniqueness, but also regarding broader contexts: family line, generation. After all, the elements of the cosmotype, in applying to all, represent so to speak bridge elements from person to person. Each individual has the component ♄ , what it means individually results from the structural order as a whole. The specific combination in which ♄ stands with all other components repeats itself analogously to the progression of constellations in the sky only after millennia. Indeed, if we were to extend the demand for completely exact correspondence also to the fixed stars, it does not repeat at all. What recurs frequently, however, is the position of ♄ in certain sections of the ecliptic, in equal aspects to a certain other planetary symbol, etc. We may isolate such element combinations as non-individual. Now this "kinship of nativities" can be made causally comprehensible through the hypothesis that heredity "hooks into" this lawful recurrence - marked by celestial periods - with the transmission of partial structures of the whole. Especially with regard to the familial reappearance of a certain set of problems, whose solution is incumbent on the individual in a changed environment, new paths are thus opened up for genetic research. Another inclusion in supra-individual contexts lies in common peculiarities of certain "vintages." Characterized by aspects of slowly moving planets, there is a set of problems of entire generations that reaches beyond the familial hereditary situation. This opens up new perspectives for social and cultural historical investigations. Thus, in two directions, the cosmotype, viewed from the angle of large series and the accumulation of analogous cases, shows man and fellow man linked: in relation to ancestors and in relation to contemporaries. Placed into these contexts, the structure considered by itself designates the formal basis of individual self-realization. THE INDIVIDUATION STAGE At the same place in Ceylon and at the same hour, a Vedda, a Hindu, and an Englishman can be born. The same measurement image applies to each of them. But to what extent does it also say the same thing? Apart from the differences mentioned so far and that of race, these are three people at very different stages of individuation. The weight ratio between vital layer and consciousness layer, the sharpness of subject-object separation, the degree of absorption in tribal commonalities or separation as an individual, in short, the imprinting of individuality, are extremely different, especially between the Vedda and the Englishman. The structural similarity analogous to the measurement image cannot refer to such differences. Even with less stark steps in the stage of individuation, the inserted correspondences must rather be adapted to the state of development. This touches on the layer theory that has become fruitful for characterological considerations. It uses the concept of structure in a historical-genetic sense, as with geological layers, so that younger, consciousness-near layers are thought to overlay the older, life- foundation-near mental areas. For such a consideration, the astrological measurement image offers some possibilities of statement, insofar as each layer has its specific correspondences and of the two cyclical systems, that of the "style forms" concerns a greater proximity to vitality, that of the "motives" a greater proximity to consciousness. It follows that with more pronounced individuation, we must pay more attention to the differentiation of motives - technically the fine structure of the measurement image. However, it is not determinable at which stage of individuation a person is, as would be required if the measurement image contained a genetic arrangement. This state of affairs reflects the nature of those elements that form the actual substance of interpretation, the holistic forces, or as they are later called, essential forces. Historical conditioning of concrete life reaches far beyond the standards of an individual existence. But those forces that establish wholeness and carry the essential typical are ahistorical, always present in every individual. Only insofar as they work in time do they relate historically. Referring to what has become historical, they represent the permanent in the change of form, typical repetitions of pre-formed forms; in their side available to life, they are the reasons for further becoming. The constellative fixedness of a person concerns a cross- section through the chain of generations, not a longitudinal section that could provide information about the position of the individual link in this chain. In any case, it is a structure of a different dimension than in layer theory. This must be taken into account in all basic concepts and in the use of correspondences, as already touched upon when we spoke of the familial hereditary level. In this sense, the interpretation of a celestial image is a translation of the principle of the elements into the life expressions and facts of a person of certain genetic becoming, inserted into a socio-historical environment in which his becoming continues. For this translation, one needs certain clues. A new concept of structure is beginning to emerge in characterological views that attempt to order psychic phenomena towards something described as core, person center, and the like. Embarrassment only arises when one wants to place an order of this kind in the genetic stage structure. This center is anchored neither in rational consciousness nor in the vital deep layers and yet makes itself felt in both places at once. For it and its relationship to the individuating forces, the image of the sun to the position of the planets now applies. Expressed in the symbol ☉ , it represents the core of being. If one decides, going into the image of layer positions, to assume an order of elements that protrudes vertically through all horizontally layered strata, then one has an image of the structure of these forces. The element ☉ takes the position as "first among equals." In each layer, these forces are the guardians of the holistic context, but limited to the member-like integration of what exists, whether genetically developed or environmentally given. They create neither this nor that; their effect consists in transforming it into components of a living whole, assigning it rank and role. In ever-equal proportions readable from the measurement image, they are found ordered on the core, standing out all the more concisely in this constellative order the more advanced the individuation is. The forces are present in the primitive as well, only "more weakly illuminated" in the constellative relationship, so to speak. He stands closer to the cosmic elementary order. The stage of development or individuation thus forms a regulative for the validity of the measurement image at all. The less a person elevates above the primordial state, the less the individual structure imprints itself, and the imprinting has its sequence. First comes the differentiation according to the "circle of style forms," then according to the "circle of motives," initially in type-like contents - from which the vulgar rulebooks derive a certain proximity to reality for people of their level -; the further differentiation of these contents and problematic deepening according to the "aspects" only occurs when the person intellectually takes possession of his individual structure. Looking back at the example once more: the same fields and tension forms mean something different for the Vedda than for the Hindu and again different for the Englishman. In the vital layer, however, the latter also behaves closer to the primitive state; individual differentiation here is predominantly temperamental. There are now visible signs of individuation, "signatures," which are also decisive markers for the application of elements in the organic layer of being. The vertical validity of our concept of structure implies that the individual shaping encompasses the entire person, from the individual variation of the racial body type to intellectual peculiarities. Among the expressions of the element "Mars" — symbolized by ♂ — there is an internal consistency wherever it is prominently present, unmistakably even in its physical signature. For a mechanistic view of nature, this is an inexplicable coincidence. However, ignoring it would be as blind as it would be naive to assume that the "planet" emits rays that give the "influenced" person angular facial features and a prominent nose, determine the sharp-angled strokes and pressure of their handwriting, incite aggressive impulses, and rhythmically push their thoughts like billiard balls toward goals of activity. The study of internal consistencies between signatures and other correspondences provides rich material for understanding physical-psychological connections. Due to the closer relationship of the "forces" to the "style forms," the signatures continue into the sphere of the latter. Knowledge of this repertoire of forms offers reliable tools for correcting inaccurately known birth times. Naturally, mastery is required over the interplay of multiple elements within the same category, including the retreat of some and the prominence of