Trees, grass, horseflies, birds, fish and humans are built of cells. Bacteria and protozoa are made of a single cell and cells are usually too small to be seen without a light microscope.
You can think of a cell as a tiny factory and power plant. It functions on its own, creates its own energy and self-replicates. Cells are the basic unit of biological life and there are many different types – blood cells, stem cells, bone cells etc. Your physical body is made of an estimated 30 trillion – 30,000,000,000,000 – cells.
In the ancient past the first astrologers associated the physical form with an astral body or soul – the seat of consciousness – and during the 1930s, while orthodox science was focused on what could be observed with the aid of technology – the body’s physical structure, chemistry and electrical activity – Elbert Benjamine was focused on what could be seen and studied with the aid of the birth chart – the soul’s mental structure, feelings and thought activity.
He was upgrading Piscean Age mysticism and its beliefs and suppositions with Aquarian Age knowledge and his study of the soul or mind required new descriptive terms to clearly explain its thought structure. And in 1934 Elbert coined the term thought-cell to describe the fundamental building block of consciousness.
Hermetic science teaches that your soul, aka mind or character, is built of thought-cells and that
- A thought-cell is unit of consciousness composed of smaller units called thought-elements.
- When a thought-element has the same or similar vibratory rate as a planet it is said to be ruled by that planet.
- A thought-element at the time of its formation possesses a vibratory rate and desire energy.
- Thought-elements having the same or similar vibratory rate fuse into thought-cells; and thought-cells having the same or a similar vibratory rate fuse into thought-cell groups and
- The awareness and emotions accompanying experience continues to build thought-elements into your astral body.
Thought-element – thought-cell formation
A thought element is formed by experience and the feeling energy it possesses at the time of its formation gives it a trajectory or desire to move in the direction indicated by its formative experience.
Thought-elements formed under pleasant, stress-free conditions contain pleasant conditioning energy. They possess desire energy that is predisposed to work to attract similar pleasant experience and repeated experience causes the formation of more pleasant – harmonious – thought-cells which merge (through the law of association) into harmonious thought-cells which in turn form into a harmonious thought-cell group.
Those formed under distressful, painful conditions contain painful conditioning energy. They possess desire energy that is predisposed to work to attract a similar painful experience and repeated experience causes the formation of more painful – discordant – thought-elements which merge (through the law of association) into discordant thought-cells which in turn form into a discordant thought-cell group.
Your soul is built of thought-cells
Thought-cells are organized states of consciousness and your soul aka astral body, which resides on a high-speed astral plane, is built of thought cells,
The psychoplasm formed by the feeling and thought processes accompanying its experience has been organized, through the law of association, into thought-cell groups and thought-structures.
Your astral body is composed of cells of consciousness and psychoplasm and your physical body is composed of physical cells and protoplasm.
(Merriam-Webster defines psychoplasm as a primordial substance held to supply the basis of the psychical as well as of the physical; and protoplasm as the organized colloidal complex of organic and inorganic substances (such as proteins and water) that constitutes the living nucleus, cytoplasm, plastids, and mitochondria of the cell.
The word protoplasm was coined in the mid-19th century and used widely, especially by scientists and others who imagined that the first life-forms must have arisen out of a great seething protoplasmic soup.)
These cells (states) of consciousness are thought compounds, even as protoplasm is a compound of chemical elements. And as the atoms of your physical body are composed of protons and electrons in various relations, so the chief elements in your astral body are made up of positive and negative impulses, formed by states of consciousness, which are also called thought-structures or urges.
These thought-structures according to the circumstances which brought them together combine into complexes.
A thought complex within your astral body corresponds to a chemical compound of physical substance, and such a compound, either in physical or astral substance exerts a definite influence. It has well defined properties and may be referred to as a center of energy.
Thought-cells animate physical cells
Each cell of your physic body and each thought-cell of your astral form has its own specialized, even though limited, intelligence.
The white blood corpuscles, for instance, will devour microbes and red corpuscles when living in a flask using the same energy they employ when defending your physical organism from contact with outside invaders.
Those of your skin and the lining walls of your intestines, in a suitable culture, will continue to arrange themselves in a mosaic which would protect a delicate surface, for months after being removed from your body. And in like manner, the thought-cells and thought structures of your soul know how to perform work whenever energies are made available for them to do it.
Every thought-cell within your soul or astral body has been built by the consciousness accompanying experience; and every cell of your physical body is expressing the thought-cell intelligence of its astral form
Knowledge of your thoughts, feelings and behavior starts with an understanding of the planets in your birth chart and the thought-cell groups they depict.
Your birth chart is a map of your soul
Your birth chart maps heredity data. It depicts your soul’s consciousness development or thought-cell structure at the time of your birth.
The layout of the planets reveals how your consciousness – thoughts and feelings – was formatted by pre-human life experience.
Each organized state of consciousness aka thought-cell group performs a specific role; and each possesses some quantity and quality of pleasure or pain which forms an essential part of its desire energy.
They desire power, significance, domesticity, security, love, affection, abundance, prosperity, freedom, intellectuality, idealism, strife, conflict and cooperation or coercion.
Each planet has a power, harmony or discord score which measures the strength and functional status of its corresponding thought-cell group; and during your formative years their desires were conditioned by human-life experience.
A planet with a discord score mapped a discordant thought-cell group and its painful conditioning by experience (after birth) set a trend that’s inclined to work to attract mishap and misfortune such as mental and/or physical health problems, career difficulties, financial distress, domestic problems and/or social-emotional upsets.
A planet with a harmony score mapped a harmonious thought-cell group and its pleasant conditioning by experience (after birth) set a trend that’s inclined to work to attract good health, mental wellbeing, career success, financial ease, domestic happiness and/or social contentment.
It’s important to know where the harmony in your birth chart is and what you can do to maximize its benefits. And you need to learn how to handle the discord in your chart and avoid or minimize its potential for distress and misfortune.
An ineffective performance by a discordant, unruly thought-cell group is impeding your progress and success potential.
Effective personal development requires a clear understanding of your primary desires; the proper use, or conditioning of their energies; and their appropriate intensification and modification to a more effective, mode of expression.
As you gradually evolve towards an elevated state of love and wisdom you live and learn. You suffer the painful consequences of your destructive thoughts and feelings. Painful experience teaches you that you’re doing something which is harming your wellbeing and that you need to modify or change the offending behavior.
Through experience your soul’s thought-cell structure evolves and changes.
Words written by Elbert Benjamine and Lenora Conwell are scattered throughout this article.
Astrology for Aquarius – sharing our knowledge
