The Psychology of Astrology

“I can only gaze with wonder and awe at the depths and heights of our psychic nature. Its non-spatial universe conceals an untold abundance of images which have accumulated over millions of years of living development and become fixed in the organism… And these images are not pale shadows, but tremendously powerful psychic factors… Beside this picture I would like to place the spectacle of the starry heavens at night, for the only equivalent of the universe within is the universe without. ” Our relationship with the stars is thought is to be as old as mankind itself.

For thousands of years, our ancestors looked at the starry night sky in awe, and early knowledge of the stars can be found in prehistoric caves, bone fragments, and megalithic structures. At around 12,000 years old, Göbekli Tepe contains the world’s oldest known megaliths, and suggests evidence of alignment with celestial events far older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza. Over time, most, if not all ancient civilisations, searched for meaning in the skies and personified their myths in the constellations.

The Sumerians were among the first to observe and record the movements of celestial bodies, laying the groundwork for the study of astrology (literally, “the study of the stars”). This helped the Babylonians in Mesopotamia to create the first organised system of astrology at around 2000 BC. The astrological premise can be found in Babylonian tablets, where it is written: “Sky and earth both produce portents, though appearing separately, they are not separate (because) sky and earth are related.

A sign which portends evil in the sky is (also) evil on earth, one that portends evil on earth is evil in the sky. ” Astrology studies the correlation between the movements of celestial objects and earthly events or human experience. The skies were thought to present celestial portends or omens, signs of future events tied to human affairs, believed as divine messages from the planets named after the gods.

The Babylonians would use these to predict future events and take action to avoid disaster. This is known as mundane astrology, which is almost wholly concerned with the welfare of the state and the king. Parallel to the Babylonians, the Egyptians developed their own astrology, based on the decans, which are 36 groups of “fixed” stars or small constellations divided into 10 degrees each, used as a timekeeping method, in order to perform religious rites at the appropriate time, among other things.

Each of the decans would be associated with a divinity. After the Alexandrian conquest in the 4th century BC, Hellenistic astrology was mixed with Egyptian astrology and Babylonian astrology, creating natal astrology. The emphasis moved from predicting mundane events to focusing on the positions of celestial bodies at the time of a person’s birth, in order to provide insights into their personality and life path.

Another branch that emerged later was electional astrology, which involves choosing the most auspicious or favourable times to initiate or undertake specific activities or events. The ancient stargazers observed how some stars remained fixed and others wandered. Though we now know that stars are not “fixed” but rather move very slowly so that their movement appears imperceptible to the human eye.

The wandering lights came to be known as planets, a word that derives from the Greek verb planasthai, meaning “to wander”. The ancients imagined the planets as gods wandering amongst the constellations along the zodiacal route. Hence planets were named after the gods.

Today, our planets are named after the Roman gods. By the classical period of the Greco-Romans, the constellations that the planets passed through were being mapped out as the celestial highway known as the zodiac. Characterising the early zodiacal signs were instinctual images embodied as animals; the figures of the zodiac are not just random and haphazard drawings, but images of the collective unconscious projected into the skies.

The word “zodiac” derives from the Greek zodiakos kúklos (circle of little animals), which reflects the prominence of animals and mythological hybrids among the twelve signs. The Chinese zodiac has twelve animals, one of which is assigned to each year in a repeating twelve-year cycle. Archetypally, magical animals are often the symbols of the Self (the total personality).

They are a purely instinctive unconscious force, greater and more powerful than the ego but entirely unconscious. This circle of animals or wheel of life embodies the complete wisdom of nature and yet does not possess the light of human consciousness. Embedded in the zodiac is the archaic wisdom known as the “seat of the soul” or the “temple of the spirit.

” We’ll now be going through some of the basics of astrology. For the astrologer, the natal chart is not just a portrait of the heavens at the moment of one’s birth, but also a snapshot of our soul’s plan, and thus, the most valuable tool one can have in one’s possession. This blueprint of the soul contains clues to help one understand one’s personality, including one’s strengths and flaws.

It reveals something larger than ourselves, as our lives are connected to the cosmos, giving us a deeper sense of meaning in life. The German astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote: “The soul of the newly born baby is marked for life by the pattern of the stars at the moment it comes into the world, unconsciously remembers it, and remains sensitive to the return of configurations of a similar kind. ” The seven classical planets or seven luminaries are: The Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

The seven days of the week are named after these luminaries. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto were not included, as they are invisible to the naked eye and were thus unknown to the ancient Hellenic peoples. Aspects are certain angles or degrees of separation between planets that gives us an understanding of their relation to each other in the birth chart.

When two or more planets line up in the sky at certain angles, their energies are said to combine. These are studied carefully by astrologers, as it is where the main action is. Depending on the combination of planets, the aspects can have a positive or negative effect on us.

The ancients had a magical-symbolic sense to the physical world, and to the human imagination the heavens appeared to be engraved with figures such as Aries the Ram, Gemini the twins, Sagittarius the archer, etc. In the natal chart, there are a total of twelve signs in the zodiac wheel, each of which lasts one month, and occupies 30 degrees of celestial longitude. On the other hand, there is the wheel of the twelve houses, which is based on the Earth’s 24-hour rotation about its own axis.

Each house represents a unique sphere of existence or human experience, wherein the energies of the zodiac signs and planets operate. The first three houses are: the self, possessions, and communication, respectively. Two people can have the same zodiac sign, but be located in a different house.

This is because one’s sun sign differs from one’s ascendant. There are three key signs in astrology: sun sign, moon sign, and ascendant or rising sign. When one talks about their zodiac sign, they are usually referring to their sun sign, that is, which zodiac sign the sun was positioned at when they were born.

This represents one’s core identity or personality type. The sun spends about thirty days in each zodiac sign. The moon sign, on the other hand, spends two and a half days in each sign, and rules one’s inner self or unconscious personality.

In alchemy, by seeking the coldness of the moon (silver), one finds the heat of the sun (gold). It is the union of the albedo and rubedo stages, the sacred marriage of king and queen, which leads to the creation of the philosophers’ stone (an alchemical symbol of the Self). On the other hand, we have the ascendant, which appears at the time of your birth and location (time zone), and changes every two hours on average.

It points to your first house in the natal chart. The ascendant represents your persona (how you present yourself to the world). The Christian mystic and astrologer Max Heindel gives us an example of two children being born in the same place at the same time having marked similarities in their lives.

He writes: “A Mr Samuel Hemmings was born in the same parish in London, at the same hour and near the same minute as King George the Third, June 4, 1738. He went into business as an ironmonger on the same day the King was crowned; he was married the same day as his majesty, died on the same day, and also other events in the two lives resembled each other. The difference in station precluded both being kings, but on the same day when one became the monarch of a kingdom, the other also became an independent business man.

” The well-known Hermetic dictum, “As above, so below,” is key to astrology. It is the idea that man (the microcosm), is influenced by the universe (the macrocosm). That is to say, truths about the nature of the cosmos may be inferred from truths about human nature, and vice versa.

The notion of seeing mythic narratives through patterns in the heavens is one of the earliest attempts to link the outer world with the inner world. The myth of astrology was and still is another way of comprehending the world around us. For the 16th century Swiss physician Paracelsus, astrology was a source of critical knowledge for the physician, for without this knowledge one was not able to interpret the inner heaven or “star of the body” correctly and thus effect healing for the patient.

In his conception of the inner heaven, he glimpsed an eternal primordial image, which was implanted in him and in all men, and recurs at all times and places. In every human being there is a special heaven, whole and unbroken. The very nature of astrology connects it with the cosmos, myths, and the gods.

Throughout most of its history, astrology was “mainstream” and considered a scholarly tradition, and though it had some sceptics, it wasn’t until the beginning of the Scientific Revolution in the 16th century that astrology was called into serious question. The astronomical predictions of Ptolemy’s geocentric model which had been used for over 1,500 years was being replaced by the heliocentric model introduced by Copernicus. Astrology slowly became pseudoscience, and astronomy was born.

Western astrology was not only frowned upon by science, but also by religion, which considered it heretical, mainly because of its emphasis on fate, rather than free will. Astrology is a liminal subject, part of the enigmatic borderlands of human exploration that resist universally agreed definition. It is one of the most historically significant and enduring, as well as one of the most poorly understood liminal realms of knowledge.

Though astrological language is filled with mythic allusions in the interplay between gods, these mythic dialogues were not used to amplify planetary aspects by traditional astrologers. It was the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung who inspired astrologers to return to the symbolic, to amplify the starry heavens with myths and remember the planetary gods. In mapping the landscape of the psyche, Jung recognised some major archetypes such as the Wise Old Man, the Great Mother, the Shadow, the Hero, the Fool, etc.

, that ancient astrologers could recognise from their planetary pantheon and zodiac signs. For example, Saturn being the figure of the Shadow, but also the Wise Old Man. Both astrological and Jungian images are representatives of archetypal forces that shape and govern the human experience; whether it is expressed in the heavens or in the unconscious.

Jung writes: “The journey through the planetary houses… signifies the overcoming of a psychic obstacle, or of an autonomous complex, suitably represented by a planetary god or demon. ” Jung was primarily interested in the way astrology could help to explore the psyche. The zodiac wheel symbolises an imaginative journey which is an early depiction of the individuation process, the path towards wholeness.

The Egyptians believed that at sunset, the Sun-god Ra would travel to the underworld, and at sunrise he would emerge again having defended himself against the monsters of the underworld. This birth-death-rebirth motif can be compared to the hero’s journey that we all partake in, as seen in myths of heroes with solar attributes. The way of the individual is symbolised by the Sun’s path through the twelve zodiac signs.

Individuation is not a linear process, but rather a process of circumambulation of the Self, that is to say, the circling around until one reaches the centre, represented by the mandala, a symbol of the Self. Similarly, by engaging with the archetypes, we participate in primordial time. The Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade calls this the eternal return.

Myths, rituals and traditions reconnect us with the sacred, allowing us to temporarily step outside of the profane into the divine realm that transports us back to the world of origins. Just like Jung’s theory of psychological types, astrology can also give a more or less total picture of the individual’s character. From the remotest times astrologers have seen a correspondence between the various planets, zodiacal signs, houses and aspects, all of which have meanings that serve as a basis for a character study or for an interpretation of a given situation.

Myths are symbols for archetypal patterns that lay beneath the human experience. Jung’s recognition of the reality of the unconscious, and his work with primordial images or archetypes was a great boon to astrology, which branched into a new field, known as psychological astrology or astropsychology. The term “archetypal” seems more fitting than “psychological” to encapsulate this symbolic approach to astrology.

Jung writes: “Obviously astrology has much to offer psychology, but what the latter can offer its elder sister is less evident. So far as I can judge, it would seem to me advantageous for astrology to take the existence of psychology into account, above all the psychology of the personality and of the unconscious. I am almost sure that something could be learnt from its symbolic method of interpretation; for that has to do with the interpretation of the archetypes (the gods) and their mutual relations, the common concern of both arts.

The psychology of the unconscious is particularly concerned with archetypal symbolism. ” Astrology can be a great amplification to Jung’s psychological types. In fact, Jung’s four function types (thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition) fit hand in glove with astrology’s ancient division of the four elements (air, water, earth, and fire).

Each is a distinct way of describing the empiric observations of the same phenomena. The astrologer is challenged to consider the unconscious features of the literal elements in the natal chart. Some astrologers are sometimes too literal and not symbolic thinkers.

With literalism, the symbolic (literally, “throwing things together”) is rendered diabolic (“throwing things apart”), so that it loses its deeper meaning. It is also important for astrologers to differentiate between the inherited tendency which is collective and the personal manifestation of the archetype. For instance, Mars symbolises the courage to take action, the capability for aggression, or the need for taking risks, but does not indicate how this will be personalised.

The natal chart expresses the archetypes, how they will play out, however, depends on the personal experience of the individual, which are related to complexes, emotionally charged groups of ideas or images that are in the personal unconscious. For Jung, astrology represents the sum of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity. Thus, it is an invaluable resource for the psychologist, for it is not mere superstition, but contains psychological facts which are of considerable importance.

He writes: “The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection… In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands. ” Astrology, just like alchemy, was crucial for Jung as a symbolic mapping of psychic processes, and provided him with a tool that he actively utilised in his psychotherapeutic practice throughout his life. Instead of saying that man was led by psychological motives, the ancients said that he was led by his stars.

People assumed that it was not psychological motivation but the movement of the stars which caused the personal reactions. The astrological criterion was simple and objective: it was given by the constellations at birth. A later interpretation was that in everyone’s heart lies the stars of one’s fate.

Thus, man started to look within himself and not in the skies. For Jung, this is the correct psychological interpretation, for astrology is projected psychology. “The question which every astrologer asks is: What are the operative forces that determine my fate despite my conscious intention?

And every psychoanalyst wants to know: What are the unconscious drives behind the neurosis? ” Jung observed that though astrology was disregarded as pseudoscience, it remained very much alive and attained a popularity never before seen. So, he set himself to understand the ancient art and technique of astrology.

In his early years as a practising psychiatrist, Jung wrote to Freud: “My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology. I make horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth. Some remarkable things have turned up which will certainly appear incredible to you… I dare say that we shall one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge that has been intuitively projected into the heavens.

For instance, it appears that the signs of the zodiac are character pictures, in other words, libido symbols which depict the typical qualities of the libido at a given moment. ” At the exact moment of birth, each person receives the typical qualities of the libido or energy which is characteristic of him or her. However, this does not have to do with the position of the stars, but rather, as we will see, with the qualitative effect of time.

Astrologers believe that an astrological age affect humanity by influencing the rise and fall of civilisations or cultural tendencies. In Western astrology, the completion of a full cycle of the sun through the zodiac, called a Great Year, takes approximately 26,000 years. An astrological age is one twelfth of the Great Year, corresponding with the one zodiacal sign, therefore lasting approximately 2200 years.

Jung often mentions the precession of the equinoxes, discovered by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in the 2nd century BC. By looking at the position of the stars and comparing them with their positions a century earlier at the same time of year, Hipparchus found that the stars were moving at least 1 degree every 72 years, causing the Earth’s North Pole to slowly point to different stars over vast periods of time. The Earth’s cyclic wobbling over time has caused the positions of these constellations to shift.

This was not taken into account in horoscopic calculations, which were based on the spring equinox being fixed at 0 degrees Aries. Thus, in the so-called tropical astrology used in the West, a person who is born on what is traditionally known as the Aries constellation, might be considered to have such a sun sign, even though the sun isn’t actually in front of that constellation due to the precession. The heavens have long since moved away from our fixed calculations.

Therefore, the signs of the zodiac are no longer aligned with the constellations after which they were originally named, so there is no causal connection between us and the stars. This, however, is not the case in sidereal astrology, which is most popular in the East, particularly in Hindu astrology, and is based on the actual position of the constellations in the observable sky, thus accounting for the precession. In Vedic astrology they speak of the four yugas (world ages).

Satya Yuga is the age of truth and virtue (the golden age), where men lived as gods. Treta Yuga is the silver age, Dwapara Yuga is the bronze age, and finally, Kali Yuga is the age of darkness (the iron age). If humanity survives this difficult period, a new and lengthy golden age will appear.

As the cycle progresses through the four yugas, each age is decreased by one-fourth. The complete cycle is believed to last for 4,320,000 years. For Jung, the fact that Western astrology nevertheless yields valid results though it does not account for precession, proves that it is not the apparent positions of the stars which work, but rather the times which are measured or determined by the stellar positions.

Time, or the moment understood as a peculiar form of energy, coincides with our psychological condition. This leads to a peculiar hypothesis, that our personality does not have to do with the position of the stars, but rather with the qualitative effect of time. Jung writes: “If anybody is born on the same day and possibly in the same hour, he is like a grape of the vineyard ripening at the same time.

All the grapes of the same site produce about the same wine. This is the truth stated by astrology and experience since time immemorial. ” Jung found a puzzling thing, that there is a really curious coincidence between astrological and psychological facts, so that one can isolate time from the characteristics of an individual, and also, one can deduce characteristics from a certain time.

We are born at a given moment, in a given place, and like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born. Astrology is a symbolic portrait of the cyclical repetitions of time, and the stars are simply used to serve as indicators of time. Psychology has little to do with the stars as a clock, which is merely an instrument used to measure a certain moment.

Whatever is born or done at this particular moment of time, has the quality of this moment of time. Therefore, time proves to be a stream of energy filled with qualities and not an abstract concept. The ancient Greeks distinguished between two types of time: qualitative time (kairos) and quantitative time (chronos).

Chronological time is the linear succession of events, and historical periods are seen as without any inherent value. However, time is also qualitative and meaningful. For Jung, astrology has to do with “qualitative time”, which is related to acausal events.

These are different from causal events, namely, those that have a clear cause-and-effect relationship and are statistical truths. Numbers too have a symbolic and not just quantitative meaning, as they contain transcendental archetypal qualities. The Pythagoreans used mathematics and numerology for mystical purposes, as numbers rule the universe.

Jung equates qualitative time to extrasensory perception phenomena, which includes precognition, psychokinesis, telepathy, etc. For instance, in the case of precognition, which Jung experienced in visions and dreams, one attains knowledge of a future occurrence. In such cases, one must deny causality, since it is inconceivable that one could observe the effect of a nonexistent cause, or of a cause that does not yet exist.

When Jung was about 72 years old, he wrote to the Vedic astrologer B. V. Raman: “I can tell you that I’ve been interested in this particular activity of the human mind for more than 30 years.

As I am a psychologist, I’m chiefly interested in the particular light the horoscope sheds on certain complications in the character. In cases of difficult psychological diagnosis, I usually get a horoscope in order to have a further point of view from an entirely different angle. I must say that I very often found that the astrological data elucidated certain points which I otherwise would have been unable to understand.

From such experiences I formed the opinion that astrology is of particular interest to the psychologist, since it contains a sort of psychological experience which we call “projected” – this means that we find the psychological facts as it were in the constellations. This originally gave rise to the idea that these factors derive from the stars, whereas they are merely in a relation of synchronicity with them. I admit that this is a very curious fact which throws a peculiar light on the structure of the human mind.

” Qualitative time is a notion that Jung eventually replaced with synchronicity, a term that refers to a meaningful correspondence between the inner world and the outer world, which cannot be causally linked. This occurs when an inwardly perceived event (dream, vision, thought, etc. ) is seen to have a correspondence in external reality, so that the inner image has “come true”.

For example, you might think of a long-lost friend, and then suddenly, that friend calls you out of the blue. Since Jung suggests that synchronicity seems to rest on an archetypal foundation, it has a great appeal to astrology which also rests on this foundation. Astrology, like the collective unconscious with which analytical psychology is concerned, consists of symbolic configurations: the planets are the gods, the archetypes.

By comparing the movement of the planets through the year to one’s natal chart, in the process of examining the transits or movements of the planets, Jung felt we could get an example of synchronicity in action. Transits provide a meaningful coincidence of planetary aspects and positions with the psychological situation, on the individual level, and insights into the collective unconscious or the zeitgeist, on the collective level. Jung’s concept of synchronicity is based on the ancient concept of sympatheia or cosmic sympathy attributed to the Stoics.

The cosmos is a whole and single entity, a living being with a soul of its own. The substance that penetrates and unifies all things is known as the pneuma (“breath of life”), the active principle that organises both the individual and the cosmos. This idea was important for ancient astrologers.

The microcosm-macrocosm relationship is one of cosmic sympathy. Psychologically, the macrocosm represents the collective unconscious. There is what Jung calls a psychoid quality to the physical (the outer world) and the psychic (the inner world), which are expressions of a fundamental unity, a shared unitary realm known to the alchemists as the unus mundus (the one world).

The Gnostics call it the pleroma (literally, “fullness”), which contains the totality of all opposites, and is beyond space and time. That is to say, past, present, and future, all exist simultaneously. It is the idea that the unconscious is related to a cosmic psyche, and the collective unconscious is connected to the anima mundi or world soul.

If this is so, the unconscious actually pervades the environment all around us and is not an encapsulated realm located exclusively within an individual, as we tend to assume. Therefore, archetypal meaning is inherent to the universe itself. While the ancient astrologers thought of the seven planets as gods, the Gnostics, an early Christian sect, thought of them as archons or rulers who prevent souls from leaving the material realm.

They are the rulers of darkness, demonic powers under the command of the Demiurge, the creator of the material universe. As with ancient astrology which thought of a sphere of fixed stars beyond the seven planets, the Gnostics thought of a celestial region beyond the planets which a soul must reach in order to escape the dominion of the archons. This could only be attained through gnosis, the lifelong goal of the Gnostics, and the highest form of knowledge, by which one liberates the divine spark within humanity from the constraints of earthly existence.

Or as the alchemists would say, awaken the deity, who lies hidden or asleep in matter. Jung and a group of researchers at the C. G.

Jung institute in Zurich had begun experiments using intuitive methods such as the I Ching, geomancy, Tarot cards, numerology and astrology. However, they were unable to continue, due to a lack of resources and personnel. These intuitive methods give one access to what Jung calls the spirit of the depths, which from time immemorial and for all future possesses a greater power than the spirit of the times, which changes with the generations.

Jung felt this conflict in his two personalities: Personality No. 1 which identifies with the mundane world, facts, reason and science, is associated with the spirit of the times. Personality No.

2, on the other hand, is the visionary, the magician, the seeker, related to the spirit of the depths. Jung’s life task revolved around integrating both the rational and magical opposites. One of such conflicts can be found in Jung’s Red Book, where he encounters a wounded giant in active imagination, described as Gilgamesh, the great Mesopotamian hero.

He highlights the struggle between imagination and science. The giant curses Jung and says “where did you suckle on this poison? ” – Jung replies “what you call poison is science.

” And he questions Jung: “You call poison truth? Is poison truth? Or is truth poison?

Do not our astrologers (and priests) also speak the truth? And yet theirs does not act like poison. ” Jung’s scientific and mystical personalities were always in conflict, which explains why he did not stop seeking scientific and statistical explanations for astrology.

However, the idea that Jung had overcome his doubts of the value of astrology later in life is believed not only by his constant references to astrology in his works and letters, or by his recommendation that all psychotherapists should learn astrology, for there are borderline cases where it is very valuable, but also by his statement to his daughter Gret Baumann-Jung (an astrologer), made when he was dying, that “the darned stuff even works after death. ” Even in an interview shortly before his death to mark his upcoming 85th birthday, Jung mentions the coming age of Aquarius. Any discussion of astrology leads, sooner or later, to the question of how to understand fate and free will.

There are two types of astrologers, one who is fatalistic and believes he has little to no free will, and one who believes that man reaps what he sows; his motto is “man, know thyself. ” The father of modern astrology Alan Leo stated, “character is destiny. ” Fate evolves with time, and it is identical with time.

When one says that the time has not yet come, or that the “stars have not yet aligned”, it means that fate has not yet fulfilled itself. By taking responsibility for our character, we participate with our fate. The astrologers and mystics were concerned with freeing man from Heimarmene, the Greek goddess of fate; that is, freeing him from the compulsive quality of the foundations of his own character.

Astrology can either be unpopular becomes it invites participation with one’s innermost self, or popular as it becomes the source of ultimate blame, “it is my stars fault! ” Both astrology and analytical psychology confront us with the unpleasant and terrifying fact that we are not the masters of our own house, and that there are elements in our psyche beyond our control. One can swim along the river of life, or against it.

Just as a clock still ticks whether we pay attention to it or not, so does the cosmic clock influence us despite what we believe. Astrology is neutral in terms of morality; it simply describes a property of nature. Astrologers, however, frequently import ethical values from various philosophies and religions to add to astrology.

Alan Leo writes: “My whole belief in the science of the stars stands for or falls with karma and reincarnation, without these ancient teachings, natal astrology has no permanent value. ” Our sorrows and pains are not the result of the active role that fate plays in our lives, but rather the result of our ignorance. We love learning about our strengths, but when it comes to our flaws and weaknesses, we turn a blind eye.

This lack of understanding does not make one more free, on the contrary, it makes one more subject to causation and less in control of one’s life. Fate leads the willing, and drags along the unwilling. If we do not see a thing, fate does it to us.

Psychologically, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Jung writes: “The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.

” Freedom is what we do with what’s been done to us. Our inherited psychic disposition corresponds to a definite moment in the colloquy of the gods, that is to say, the psychic archetypes. Fate and individuation are closely connected, for there exists an a priori existence of a character structure mirrored by the natal chart.

The intent of this essence – personified by the daimon – is reflected in the qualities of time present in the astrological symbols. The ancient Greeks believed that the daimon was man’s character, an individualised soul-image, which was called “Master of the House”, and could be discovered in one’s natal chart, some suggest it is the ascendant. Though such a technical method is inferior to true gnosis, which can be attained through theurgic invocation of the daimon as the Neoplatonists suggest.

The American psychologist James Hillman writes: “The soul of each of us is given a unique daimon before we are born, and it has selected an image or pattern that we live on earth. This soul-companion, the daimon, guides us here; in the process of arrival, however, we forget all that took place and believe we come empty into this world. The daimon remembers what is in your image and belongs to your pattern, and therefore your daimon is the carrier of your destiny.

” Fate and soul are two names for the same principle, and the goal is individuation, because it is the most complete expression of that fateful combination, we call individuality. Individuation can be compared with the myth of the soul’s journey through the planetary spheres, as discussed in Hermetic and Neoplatonist writings. Before the soul’s descent into incarnation, it passes through the planetary spheres and takes on the qualities of each planet in the process, and in our death the soul ascends back to the planetary spheres and gives back to each planet the qualities it had taken from them at the time of birth.

We can distinguish between two types of astrology: one that is exoteric and another that is esoteric. Exoteric astrology is pop-astrology, which the public is well aware of, it is a dumbed-down version used for commercialising spiritual knowledge. This is the astrology where con-artists seek to make a quick buck out of the emotional turmoil of other people, the victims especially being those who are unconscious of the trickster archetype, and have been tricked by their own naivety or self-deception.

Astrology is seen as the “gold-standard of superstition. ” Since the whole field of astrology has garnered a bad reputation, it is often not even considered worthy of exploration. Esoteric astrology is the shadow side, which represents the hidden or unknown characteristics.

This is the gold found in the filth, as the alchemists would put it. It is where one gains the insights to enrich one’s understanding of oneself and one’s purpose, as well as other people and one’s place in the cosmos. Jung was very interested in understanding the astrological age ever since writing Aion, which is the name of a Hellenistic deity associated with cyclical time and the zodiac.

In this work, Jung sought to illuminate the change of psychic situation within the Christian aeon. He makes a sweeping statement: “The course of our religious history as well as an essential part of our psychic development could have been predicted more or less accurately, both regards to time and content, from the precession of the equinoxes through the constellation of Pisces. ” Jung observes that the birth of Christ begins at the Age of Pisces, the two fish swimming in opposite directions.

At around 7 BC there was a conjunction of Saturn (the malefic) and Jupiter (the benefic), representing a union of extreme opposites. The star of Bethlehem seen by the Magi, was the soul of Christ that descended upon the earth. From this extraordinary astrological event, was inferred an equally extraordinary event in human history, beginning a new aeon.

This would place the birth of Christ under Pisces. The symbolism of the fish is prevalent throughout Christianity, a code name for Jesus was the Greek word for fish ichthys. The apostles were called “fishers of men”.

Jung reckoned that we were in a paradigm of shifting ages, a time of change that he had been able to make sense of through astrology. In the Red Book, Jung reveals his understanding of his own role in this coming new aeon, and in Aion he provides, later in life, a rational exegesis of the revelations of the Red Book, so that the two works are fundamentally interconnected. Jung notes that the concepts of heaven and hell cannot remain separated forever.

They will be united again and the Age of the Fishes will soon be over. If the Age of Pisces is ruled by the archetypal motif of the “hostile brothers”, Christ and Anti-Christ, then the approach of the next age, Aquarius (estimated to fall between AD 2000 and 2200) will constellate the union of opposites, bringing forth a concept of human totality. It will then become more difficult to separate good from evil, light from darkness, which will form part of a unity.

The Christians call it The Second Coming, the emergence of the Son of God. Nietzsche calls it the Übermensch, who must go beyond good and evil. The mystic Swedenborg calls it the Maximus Homo, the Universal Human, who represents heaven in a human form.

And others call it an age when man will awaken to his spiritual powers, whatever that might entail. Jung was driven to speak of the change of aeons because the “psychic changes” of these transition times are shocking and can create widespread feelings of malaise, anxiety, and fear that run through all the cultures of the planet. The signs that point in this direction consist in the fact that the cosmic power of self-destruction is placed in the hands of man.

Jung wanted to warn us, so we – “those few who will hear” him – can experience these “psychic changes” consciously and thus limit the destructive impulses they could induce. In an interview conducted in 1959, Jung stated: “Christianity has marked us deeply because it incarnates the symbols of the era so well. It goes wrong in so far as it believes itself to be the only truth; when what it is is one of the great expressions of truth in our time.

To deny it would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater. What comes next? Aquarius, the Water-pourer… In our era the fish is the content; with the Water-pourer, he becomes the container.

It’s a very strange symbol. I don’t dare to interpret it. So far as one can tell, it is the image of a great man approaching.

” Astrology will continue to be criticised by the scientifically-minded. The great task of our age is to unite science with spirituality. Jung writes: “Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were.

But the “heart glows,” and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being. ” It is a universal law that a wave of spiritual awakening is always followed by a period of doubting materialism, each phase is necessary in order that the spirit may receive equal development of heart and intellect without being carried too far in either direction. Astrology, however, is not a belief system; we do not need to believe in something to feel its effect.

Astrology persists millennium after millennium to remind us of the interconnected cosmos in which we live, the mysteries, ambiguities, and sheer beauty and elegance of universal order; that offer meaning and hope to the soul.