Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
Getting a grip on Mental Chemistry
Marc Jones in How and Why Astrology works, posited the idea of Mental Chemistry. it is an odd name and often confused with intelligence. But that is a mistake, as Dr. Jones made clear at Point 5 of his Fifteen points of how an astrologer should read a horoscope.
The idea behind Mental Chemistry is understanding how you react to information and then via the Department of Efficiency how you apply it to the task at hand. So Mental Chemistry is the initial grasp of information, or how you collect or react to information. It is not the impetus to action, because for that you need to look at the Line of Efficiency. So how do you find your Mental Chemistry, and then once knowing how do you use it? That is what this article wants to discuss.
First you must find your Mental Chemistry. To do that you need to know the daily average speed of the Moon. That is a simple numeric: 13 degrees and 10 minutes. Now you take the speed of the Moon on the day you were born. For our simple example it is 13 degrees and 09 minutes, or fairly exact. Now you take the position of the planet Mercury relative to the position of the Sun: it is close, very close, far away and in which direction? Thus the three items become a matrix of average, fast and gestalt depending upon the speed of Mercury, the speed of the Moon and the relation of the former to the Sun. So jot that down, and we are ready to go.
Understanding Gestalt Chemistry
Naturally everyone was alarmed at such a decision, and so too was the “real mother” who cried out “No, let her have it I do not want my baby murdered”, hile the fake mother agreed to this monstrous atrocity. Solomon was not called the wisest man in all of Israel for nothing, and smartly told the first mother, “He’s yours” because he knew only the mother would rather see her baby wholly alive with another than partly dead with herself, for indeed, a half was not better than a whole.
Why Gestalt?
Marc Jones borrowed this term from his teacher Jenny Bollenbacher, and idea behind it is a gestalt mental chemistry does not react to isolated bits of information, but waits until the whole picture is known to them. It is that waiting, for the Moon is slow and thus not reflective of what is actually happening, that makes the gestalt individual need to see and verify a pattern before acting, and that need to know the whole picture, understand the whole megillah, that makes them “slow,.” it is not as Dr. Jones pointedly states a comment on their intelligence, it is a comment on their reaction to information.
Since they are waiting, as in in Samuel Becket’s proverbial Waiting for Godot scenario, nothing gets done, because it is possible that all the pieces will never be known, or are found out because the situation is now revealed and so nothing has to be done, for it is complete.
Thus for gestalt Mental Chemistry types, they have to set limits on how much they need to know, and how long they are willing to wait, otherwise the wait becomes the end result in itself, or after waiting for so long when it finally comes in they have lost interest.
On the other hand someone who has a Fast Mental Chemistry, barely waits at all. They jump to a conclusion basing it more on intuition, the Moon effect, than logic. People will ask them, how do you know? What are you basing it on, and often they do not have an answer, because while it seems readily apparent to them, they find when pointedly asked, they cannot pinpoint to a single thing that gave them the answer and so look foolish.
Left to their own devices, with no one to check them, Fast Mental Chemistry types may jump onto the proverbial wagon a only to find it was the wrong one and have to jump off. That also can end up being a habit and they become like a jack rabbit, jumping from one idea to another and never fully developing any. On the positive side, Fast Mental Chemistry folks see trends long before they develop.
For them, like the Gestalt’s they have to make a checklist of why they think its a good idea, because by formulating it into something tangible that they can see, they force themselves to view it realistically. This in many cases is all the check they need, because the self-check makes them slow down and not react to every new stimuli.
Goldilocks and Regular Mental Chemistry
Finally, we have a person with an average Mental Chemistry which sounds like Goldilocks and the three bears and just right, but instead has it own pitfalls. Here the person weighs the two but decides, using their Department of Efficiency, there is nothing striking about the idea, everyone is doing it, no one is doing it, or worse, so if it was such a good idea, someone would be doing it and so it is done. This reductionist cycle encourages them that while the idea is good it is “passe.” Unlike the fast mental chemistry they certainly are not going to jump on something half-cocked, but neither are they the gestalt person waiting for something to come their way– more information, clearer confirmation, etc., as they feel they understand the issue at hand, and can make their decision with the information at hand. The problem of course is their decision the ship of their ideas has already sailed or perhaps not even worth leaving port, and so they never get underway.
Applying for the Efficiency Department
Now that you have Mental Chemistry down, you need to apply it — the how in the equation. That comes under the heading of the Department of Efficiency, or as used on Celestiology, the Line of Efficiency, because I do not use the whole Department methodology, just the lines. So with your Mental Chemistry in hand, look to your Line of Efficiency and see where it is a bother usually.
The Astrological Trick
While I have mentioned everyday tricks to help one overcome their Mental Chemistry, there is also an astrological pitfall — and that is transits and progressions for they can change your default mental chemistry and your Line of Efficiency just when you thought you had it nailed. So if on your natal chart, your Line of Efficiency is between the second and sixth houses, or your personal resources trine your work ethic, that will change with your Solar Return, Transit, Progressions to something else, or could be missing altogether.
Marc Jones highlights the latter in the lives of President Abraham Lincoln and mystic Annie Besant in his “Scope of Prediction.”
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