Dane Rudhyar

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Dane Rudhyar , born as Daniel Chennevière (born March 23, 1895 in Paris , † September 13, 1985 in San Francisco ), was an American contemporary composer , painter and astrologer of French origin. He was the founder of humanistic astrology (and is therefore considered the founder of psychological astrology ) as well as a pioneer of modern transpersonal astrology.

Life

Dane Rudhyar was born Daniel Chennevière in Paris in 1895 . At the age of 12, a serious illness and surgery rendered him unable to function, and he turned to music and mental development to compensate for his physical handicaps. He studied at the Sorbonne , University of Paris (enrolled at the age of 16) and the Paris Conservatory . His early projects in philosophy and his connections to the Parisian artist society led him to believe that all existence is cyclical in character. As a youth influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche , Rudhyar had the vision of himself to be a germ-laying person of the New Age culture movement.

Because of his illness, Rudhyar was not drafted as a soldier during World War I. In November 1916 Rudhyar's music brought the artist to New York City , where his arrangements for orchestra and original compositions were performed on April 4, 1917 as part of a métachorie performance by the Metropolitan Opera . These were some of the first polytonal musical works to be performed in the United States. In New York he also met Sasaki Roshi, one of the early Japanese Zen teachers in the USA, who guided him in the studies of Eastern philosophy and the occult . During the years 1917 and 1919, during which he lived partly in New York City, Canada and Philadelphia, he adopted the name Rudhyar , a cognate of several Sanskrit words including the divine name Rudra . His interest was further stimulated by his connection to theosophy , which began when he was commissioned in 1920 to compose music for the production of the Los Angeles company headquarters. In 1926, Rudhyar received US citizenship. He stayed in California (often commuting to New York) during the 1920s and in 1930 married Marla Contento, secretary to independent theosophist Will Levington Comfort. Comfort introduced Rudhyar to the American writer Marc Edmund Jones , who in turn introduced him to astrology . Rudhyar received lessons in astrology from Jones.

Rudhyar was engaged in astrology during a period when he was also studying the psychological writings of Carl Gustav Jung , and he began to think about combining astrology with Jungian psychology . Rudhyar also cites Jan Smut's book Holism and Evolution as an influence. The combination of astrology and depth psychology overcame some fundamental problems, e.g. B. the deterministic approach of astrology and the problem of appointing a generally accepted mediator of the astrological effects. Rudhyar advocated the thesis that the stars do not cause these effects in people's lives, but are images, synchronized with people. They showed the individual, psychological strengths that are effective in the individual, but emphasized human freedom. At first he described his new interpretation as Harmonic Astrology , but as his ideas matured he named it Psychological Astrology , the subject of his monumental work The Astrology of Personality , published in 1936. A friend, the theosophist Alice A. Bailey (the invented the term New Age ), encouraged the development of his thoughts and published his book in her publishing house Lucis Publishing. His initial writings were regular articles in Paul Clancy's American Astrology and Grant Lewis Horoscope Magazine .

Rudhyar has significantly shaped psychological astrology and in doing so placed people ("humanistic") radically in the center. For this reason he called his psychological astrology - based on Abraham Maslow's humanistic psychology - from 1963 as " humanistic astrology ". For the next two decades, Rudhyar continued writing and lecturing on astrology. He taught astrology based on real events and personality. In the meantime revered in astrological circles, it remained largely unknown until the 1970s. With the emergence of the New Age movement, important publishing houses discovered him and published his writings: one of the first was The Practice of Astrology , published in 1970 by Penguin Books .

In 1969, Rudhyar founded the International Committee of Humanistic Astrology , a small professional society to develop his perspective. Based on transpersonal psychology , he developed a new astrological direction from 1975, transpersonal astrology , the idea of ​​which he had carried with him since 1930, but was now formulated for the first time in his work From Humanistic to Transpersonal Astrology . His aim was to bring people into contact with the spiritual forces, but not - according to a widespread way of thinking - by the fact that the person should increase , but the spiritual forces should descend to the person (the person was thus allowed to himself stay). He began reflecting on the New Age movement and wrote some of his more complex works on planetary consciousness and New Age philosophy. Dane Rudhyar lived in Palo Alto from 1976 for health reasons . He died in San Francisco in 1985 .

effect

Wulfing von Rohr once said "With Dane Rudhyar we experience astrology as an expression of a sense of order, with the aim of transforming from chaos to cosmos, from a collectively compulsive human nature to an individual creative personality."

Rudhyar has significantly shaped psychological astrology and in doing so placed people ("humanistic") radically in the center. For this reason he called his astrology - based on Abraham Maslow's Humanistic Psychology - from 1963 as Humanistic Astrology . Based on the transpersonal psychology he developed from 1975 a new astrological direction, the transpersonal astrology . Rudhyar also made the Sabian symbols of grade astrology known, which are particularly suitable for an intuitive approach to a horoscope. He explained the symbols and found certain principles of order in them.

As a musician, Dane Rudhyar influenced Ruth Crawford Seeger , Carl Ruggles and Glenn Branca .

Works

Fonts

Astrological writings

Most of his 40+ books and hundreds of articles relate to astrology and spirituality. The book, which brought him a good reputation in astrological circles, was also his first book on the subject in 1936: The Astrology of Personality . In it he argued that astrology cannot give concrete predictions of events, but can provide insights into the inner patterns, the inner nature of a person at the time of his or her birth. Rudhyar's "Astrology of Personality" is one of the most influential treatises in modern astrology ( individual astrology ), which emphasizes the responsibility and free will of the horoscope owner.

Rudhyar's astrological writings greatly influenced the New Age movement of the 1960s and 1970s, especially among the hippies from San Francisco , where he lived and frequently lectured.

Some of the most important astrological writings of Rudhyar are:

  • Astrology of personality
  • Astrological zodiac and consciousness
  • Astrology and psyche
  • The planets of personality
  • Esoteric astrology
  • Astrological aspects

Musical writings

Dane Rudhyar wrote mostly musical writings, especially the following:

  • Claude Debussy and His Work , 1913
  • Dissonant Harmony , 1928
  • Rebirth of Hindu Music , 1928
  • The New Sense of Sound , 1930
  • The Magic of Tone and the Art of Music , 1982

Fiction novels

Dane Rudhyar also wrote three (science) fiction novels :

  • Rania An Epic Tale, 1930 (first published in 1973)
  • When Cosmic Love Awakens. A transpersonal love story, 1952
  • Return from no return. A paraphysical novel, 1973

Compositions

Rudhyar's own compositions tend towards dissonant harmonies with no systematic diversity as in Charles Seeger's compositions - Rudhyar was averse to these and pursued a rigid approach. His musical ideas were influenced by Henri Bergson and theosophy , and he viewed composers as media when he wrote, "The new composer is no longer a 'composer', but an evoker, a magician ." The magician's material is the musical instrument, a living thing, a mysterious being with its own laws, very alive.

Rudhyar's works for piano are unmistakable in the Tetragram (1920–1967) and Pentagram (1924–1926) series as well as his two piano works Syntony (1919–1924, rev. 1967) and Granites (1929).

Further compositions by Rudhyar are:

  • Metachory , 1917
  • Sinfonietta , 1925
  • Surge of Fire
  • Transmutation a tone ritual , 1976
  • Advent
  • Crisis and Overcoming for the Kronos Quartet

Transcendental art of painting

Dane Rudhyar was a member of the Transcendental Painting Group in Santa Fe , New Mexico in 1938 and 1939 . The idea behind the transcendental drawing and painting was to draw and paint the ideas of the psychological archetypes described by CG Jung . The transcendental art of painting is related to the surrealist art of painting and a forerunner of the cosmic art of the 1950s, the psychedelic art of the 1960s and the visionary art of the 1970s. Throughout his career, Rudhyar continually drew and painted new transcendental works of art or used illustrations that he had originally made to illustrate his astrology books.

Examples of his paintings of transcendental art are:

  • Storm Gods , 1938
  • Power at the Crossroads , 1938
  • Meditation On Power , 1946
  • Surging Depths , 1946
  • Dynamic Equilbrium , 1946
  • Creative Man , 1947 (used by Rudhyar as the cover illustration of his book The Astrology of Transformation in 1980 )
  • Color Harmony , 1947
  • Seed Flight , 1947
  • The Cradled One , 1949
  • Antiphony , 1949
  • Devolution , 1952
  • Warrior to the Light , 1952

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Part One The Parisian Years: 1895-1916". Dane Rudhyar: An Illustrated Biographical Sketch . Cyberworld Khaldea. Last accessed April 16, 2011.
  2. ↑ Candy Hillenbrand. "Towards an Astrology of Meaning and Purpose THE LEGACY OF DANE RUDHYAR (1895-1985)". Retrieved April 17, 2011. "Leyla Rael, Rudhyar's 4th wife and partner at the time of his death, writes that Rudhyar believed that any person living at such an" autumnal "time is faced with a fundamental choice - to identify either with the decaying leaves (that which is ending) or with "the small inconspicuous seeds that hold the promise of new life in the following" spring "". Daniel consciously chose "seedhood" and in 1916, at the age of 21, he left his native France and traveled to "The New World" of America, leaving behind not only his country, but also his name and all associations with his family and culture of origin. He now became Dane Rudhyar. To Rudhyar, it was vital that in order to act as a "seed" man or woman in the life of a new cycle or phase of history, one must sever oneself from all past conditioning and open oneself to a basic "mutation". "
  3. ^ "Part One The Parisian Years: 1895-1916". Dane Rudhyar: An Illustrated Biographical Sketch. Cyberworld Khaldea. Last accessed April 16, 2011.
  4. ^ Part Two in the New World: 1917–1919 ". Dane Rudhyar: An Illustrated Biographical Sketch. Cyberworld Khaldea. Last accessed April 16, 2011.
  5. ^ Gagné, Nicole V. (2012). Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music , Scarecrow Press, p. 230. ISBN 0810867656
  6. ↑ Rudhyar, Dane (1970). Preface to the 3rd edition of The Astrology of Personality (mass market paperback) (3rd ed.). Doubleday. p. vii-xvi. "It occurred to me then that astrology could be used in close connection with depth-psychology if it were considered in a new light and if many of its basic concepts were reformulated so as to fit the mentality and the experiences of the modern men and women of our post World War I society. "
  7. ^ Melton, J. Gordon, Jerome Clark, and Aidan A. Kelly New Age Encyclopedia Detroit: 1990 Gale Research
  8. ↑ Rudhyar, Dane, Astrological Zodiac and Consciousness.
  9. ↑ When Cosmic Love Awakens - A Transpersonal Love Story ; Rudhyar archival project presented by Cyber ​​World Khaldea
  10. ^ Piper, Raymond F. and Lila K. Cosmic Art New York: 1975 Hawthorn Press. (Contains the illustration of a transcendental painting by Dane Rudhyar)
personal data
SURNAME Rudhyar, Dane
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chennevière, Daniel (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French composer and founder of humanistic astrology
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 1985
Place of death San Francisco