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Triangles: Aries Leo Sagittarius

Fire Triangle: 3 Esoteric Fires of Spirit, Consciousness, Form

Each of the four elemental triangles span all three crosses—Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable—the symbolism of which is crucial to an understanding of esoteric astrology. Each elemental triangle represents how the basic principles represented by each cross is reflected in human experience.

before the Door of Initiation lies the burning ground which all disciples and initiates must tread.

The three fire signs symbolises the fires that embody the primal three principles of the esoteric cosmos: Spirit, Consciousness and Form. Each of the three fire signs represents one of these principles:

Leo plays a key role in this triangle:

The Fixed Cross is the cross of light. And playing through this Cross all the time, and emanating from Leo [at each of its three levels—orthodox, esoteric and hierarchical—are these three fires] —producing purification, the intensification of the light and eventual revelation to the purified [individual] who stands in light. […] each of these fires “clears the way by burning” for the expression of the three divine aspects: spirit (Aries), soul (Leo) and body (Sagittarius). (EA 293)

Around the time of the first three initiations (which concern the refining of the mind, emotions and body) the consciously developing individual experiences this ‘burning’ in these latter human reflections of the three greater principles (life, consciousness and form) as an often painful or difficult intensification of experience that “burns off” the areas of personal experience inessential to the immanent shift in personal consciousness, allowing the human reflection to convey the energies of those greater principles more transparently, so that the mind is responsive to the inspiration of the spirit, the emotions to the fuller consciousness of the Self or soul, and the body and life activities are in harmony with the forces and cycles that shape the natural world. (EA 293-4)

Aries begins the process and is the “initiator of the process which leads to progress”

fire is the great liberator and Aries is the leading fire sign which will eventually “fuse the beginning and the end, blend the opposites and dispel both time and space.”

The growth process, currently inspired (because of the current earth-bound nature of humanity) by Capricorn will eventually—at the end of this cosmic cycle—be completed in Aries. (EA 304).

Fire, Water and Purification

Alice Bailey mentions these two elements (and their triangle) as being:

connected in the public consciousness with the thought of purification—one is water and the other is fire. … Fire always carries forward esoterically that which water has begun. (EA 287)

The Water signs govern the process of purification through the influence of the three crosses during the repeated learning experiences undertaken under the general umbrella of the mutable cross of experience. This is human life before the reversal of the wheel. After reversal fire takes the place of water and burns away all dross, and we gradually become sensitive to the influences of the fiery triplicity. (EA 288)

After the water signs help bring about re-orientation, Aries Leo and Sagittarius (in order) lead us towards universality, self-consciousness and one-pointed attitudes (or focussed aims), with Leo providing (under the general umbrella of the fixed cross) the crucial development in consciousness that enables us to know ourselves through true self-awareness before we can know our soul or true inner self and thus also begin to know and recognise the inner selves of others.

The Elemental Tripicites

Esoteric Astrology: 287-8, 293-4, 304