If we then look across the Channel to the major figures of the English Enlightenment who were contemporary with the French philosophes—Pope, Hume, Gibbon, Adam Smith—we find the same pattern. Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man (reprinted over sixty times in France before 1789) was published during the conjunction of 1734, the same year as Voltaire’s Philosophical Letters. David Hume’s principal philosophical work, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, was published during the conjunction of 1748, the same year as Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws. And both Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations were published during the conjunction of 1775–76, at the beginning of the American Revolution.
Nor did the sequential pattern cease there. The Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions immediately following the above sequence precisely coincided with the crucial milestones in the history of political and economic philosophy marked by the series of seminal works and analyses, at fourteen-year intervals, by Bentham(1789), Ricardo (1817), Tocqueville (1831), Marx and Engels (1844–45), and John Stuart Mill (1859).9 Moreover, in the history of science in the decades during and after the American and French Revolutions, a parallel sequence of consecutive major breakthroughs and publications marked the revolution in modern chemistry, again precisely in coincidence with the Jupiter-Uranus cycle of every fourteen years: the crucial experiments by Priestley and Lavoisier that led to the overthrow of the phlogiston theory and the birth of modern chemistry (1775–76); Lavoisier’s Traité élémentaire de chimie (“Elementary Treatise on Chemistry”), the foundation text of modern chemistry (1789); and Dalton’s construction of the first table of atomic weights and first statement of the atomic theory of matter (1803).
Further: Faraday’s historic experiments that demonstrated his discovery of electromagnetic induction took place during the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction of 1831. During this same conjunction, Charles Darwin embarked on his historic voyage to South America and the Galápagos Islands on HMS Beagle. During the next conjunction, of 1844–45, Darwin wrote his first summary of the theory of natural selection, the first version of what became The Origin of Species, a two-hundred-page manuscript that he shared only privately (much like Copernicus with his first summation of the heliocentric theory, the Commentariolus). Exactly fourteen years later in coincidence with the next conjunction came Darwin’s and Wallace’s announcement in 1858 of the theory of evolution and Darwin’s writing of The Origin of Species itself. And fourteen more years and one cycle later, in coincidence with the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction of 1871–72, Darwin published The Descent of Man.
Parenthetically, following up on our earlier discussion of Darwin’s and Lincoln’s nearly identical birth charts: The year 1858, which first brought public attention to Darwin and his theory of evolution during this Jupiter-Uranus conjunction after the joint announcement at the Linnean Society in London, also first brought Lincoln and his views on slavery to national prominence as a result of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, when Lincoln’s articulate opposition to the extension of slavery in the United States became widely known throughout the country. Lincoln received the nomination for U.S. Senator that began his campaign on June 16, 1858. Darwin received the crucial letter from Wallace that set into motion the public dissemination of his theory on June 18, 1858.
Returning to the history of science, it was during the immediately following Jupiter-Uranus opposition in 1865 that James Clerk Maxwell published his landmark paper “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field,” which was the culmination of the revolution in nineteenth-century physics that had begun with Faraday’s experiments during the conjunction of 1831. (Coincidentally, Maxwell himself was born during the latter conjunction in the same month Faraday announced to the Royal Society the results of these experiments, which became the basis for Maxwell’s work in formulating the equations that underlay the theory of electromagnetic fields.)
Finally, it was during that same Jupiter-Uranus opposition of 1865 that Gregor Mendel announced his discovery of the laws of heredity, which gave Darwin’s and Wallace’s evolutionary hypothesis—announced during the immediately preceding conjunction—the genetic mechanism it required for its theoretical completion. However, this announcement by the Austrian monk-scientist, which occurred at two meetings of the Natural Science Society in Brno, Moravia, in February and March 1865, went virtually unnoticed. The revolutionary discoveries were entirely ignored by the scientific community for several decades until suddenly, in 1900, during the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction of that year, Mendel’s work was simultaneously rediscovered by three European botanists—de Vries, Correns, and von Tschermak—who, working independently (in Amsterdam, Tübingen, and Vienna, respectively), conducted experiments that verified Mendel’s theory and synchronistically published separate reports to that effect in a single two-month period. During the same year and conjunction, the English biologist William Bateson also discovered Mendel’s work, translated his paper into English, and named the new science of genetics.
Music and Literature
The evidence of sequential correlations discussed in these chapters suggests that major cyclical alignments of the outer planets coincide with a mutual activation of the corresponding archetypal principles, but rather than simply signifying a mechanical “switching on” of the specific archetypal gestalt and then a “switching off” when the transit is over, each alignment seems to represent a more complex and subtle unfolding of archetypal wave patterns. The evidence suggests that each alignment in a particular planetary cycle coincides with a period in which the corresponding archetypal complex manifests itself in a definite, readily discerned manner—it “registers,” it expresses its meaning, it brings forth its essence into the collective psyche with a conspicuous clustering of archetypally appropriate events—but then after the alignment is over, the same impulse continues to develop. It endures, it evolves, it goes through changes, sometimes below the surface, sometimes above. It undergoes constant modification under the impact of new archetypal influences as the ongoing and ever-shifting cyclical alignments with other planets occur, and as individuals undergo their personal transits and creatively respond to and enact in their particular ways the larger archetypal forces at work.
Then when the original two planets again come into major cyclical alignment, there takes place another conspicuous activation of the relevant archetypal complex, with the occurrence of cultural and historical phenomena that are clearly related to earlier periods of the same cycle. But this new activation takes place in such a way that everything that has unfolded since the last cyclical alignment has in the meantime been absorbed and is now newly expressed by the new cyclical upwelling of that archetypal complex. We saw suggestions of such a process of ongoing archetypal evolution with, for example, the Uranus-Pluto cycle and the great emancipatory movements and Dionysian awakenings that cyclically unfolded in the modern era. We saw this again with the Saturn-Pluto cycle and its sequential correlation with the world wars and Cold War, and with collective moral confrontations with the shadow side of existence. And it is evident in the historical developments cited here as well, from social and political liberation to scientific revolutions and artistic creativity.
Whatever field of human activity I turned my attention to, once I grasped the template provided by the Jupiter-Uranus cycle, the coinciding patterns of creative breakthroughs and cultural milestones were surprisingly clear. In the field of music, for example, I immediately examined the case of Beethoven’s Eroica, his Third Symphony, this being perhaps the most explicitly and expansively Promethean work in the history of classical music—revolutionary in spirit, in conception, and in historical impact. I found that Beethoven composed the Eroica exactly during the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction of 1803. This was the first conjunction after that of 1788–89 and the start of the French Revolution, whose ideals directly inspired the great composition. In turn, Beethoven began the composition of the magnificently expansive and exalting Ninth
Symphony during the immediately following conjunction fourteen years later, in 1817.
When I looked back to the work that most fully anticipated the Eroica—Mozart’s last symphony, the aptly named Jupiter Symphony in C Major (K.551)—I found that this had in fact been composed during the 1788–89 Jupiter-Uranus conjunction exactly one full cycle before the Eroica. Moreover, during this same conjunction, Haydn had composed his Oxford Symphony (No. 92 in G Major), which has itself been called Haydn’s “Eroica” because of the new creative freedom it displayed, beyond the classical constraints of earlier symphonies. The Oxford began a new stage in Haydn’s musical evolution that unfolded through the 1790s with his series of London symphonies, which with Mozart’s last three symphonies represent the summit of orchestral composition before the Eroica.
The diachronic patterning of these two consecutive conjunctions (1788–89 and 1803) that link Mozart and Haydn to Beethoven is suggestive of the more complex picture of archetypal evolution I just described above. These were the two Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions that took place at the beginning and end of the French Revolutionary period. One could say that what separated Mozart and Haydn’s late symphonies from Beethoven’s Eroica and its successors was the Uranus-Pluto opposition of the 1790s and all it represented. In archetypal terms, it was precisely the radical intensification of Promethean and Dionysian qualities in dynamic interplay that marked the dramatic evolution from Mozart and Haydn to Beethoven—the heightened emancipatory drive, the titanic will to creative freedom, the intensity of turmoil and sudden unpredictable shifts, the unleashing of elemental forces, the awakening of nature’s depths, the sweeping mass movement of energies, the transformative power—the same qualities that marked the entire French Revolutionary epoch. As Wagner would later put it, Beethoven was “a Titan, wrestling with the Gods.”
Remarkably, when I looked to the history of classical music after the Eroica to that work which exerted a comparably revolutionary influence on the second half of the nineteenth century—Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde—I found that this seminal work too was composed precisely during a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction (the same conjunction, centered on the year 1858, that coincided with the Darwin-Wallace announcement of the theory of evolution and Darwin’s writing of The Origin of Species).10 Indeed, in a pattern that closely resembled the one just noted with the Eroica, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde coincided with the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction that occurred immediately after the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of 1845–56, this being the very next Uranus-Pluto axial alignment after Beethoven and the French Revolutionary period.
Again, like the Eroica, Tristan’s extraordinary elemental power seemed to embody and carry forth the combination of Promethean and Dionysian archetypal energies—at once titanic and emancipatory, instinctual and revolutionary—that had been catalyzed during the years of the Uranus-Pluto period and influenced Wagner’s inner development and musical aspirations, just as had occurred with Beethoven during the Uranus-Pluto alignment of the 1790s. Moreover, in the same year that Wagner began composing Tristan und Isolde, Baudelaire published the equally revolutionary Les Fleurs du mal. The coincidence has been noted by others: “That Wagner as harmonist initiated a new era is a commonplace of musical history; some historians are even inclined to regard Tristan as the beginning of modern music, just as Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal marked the beginning of modern literature. The coincidence of date is amazing.”11
A remarkably similar pattern was visible with Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, whose famous premiere in Paris took place in 1913 just as the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction reached the 20° point. Once again, this was the first Jupiter-Uranus conjunction to occur after the Uranus-Pluto opposition of the early twentieth century—the very next axial alignment after that just cited for Wagner—and again the characteristic Uranus-Pluto theme of a revolutionary awakening of Dionysian energies was vividly embodied. We can see the brilliantly creative Rite of Spring (and the audience’s response at its premiere) both as bringing to new expression the unleashed orgiastic and chthonic forces of nature (Uranus-Pluto), and as anticipating the devastating destruction and epoch-ending trauma of the coming world war (coincident with the Saturn-Pluto conjunction that also was then just beginning, exactly one cycle after the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of Stravinsky’s birth).
As these examples suggest, both the exact timing and the archetypal character of the correlations of major milestones in the history of classical music were considerably more complex than can be summarized as a simple correspondence with the Jupiter-Uranus cycle. Not only the multiplicity of ongoing and overlapping planetary cycles of the world transits but also the personal transits of the composers were consistently relevant. For example, Stravinsky underwent a once-in-a-lifetime personal transit of Pluto conjoining his natal Sun during the years 1909 to 1913, the period in which he composed The Rite of Spring and the similarly Dionysian works The Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911). After this period of primordial intensity, Stravinsky’s work took on a decidedly more restrained character as he entered into his neoclassical and serialist phases. He never again composed works having the same inspired violently eruptive potency as those of the Rite of Spring period.
An important factor in assessing all such correlations was not simply the fact of a creative breakthrough but also the specific quality and spirit of the musical works in question. It is true that the Jupiter-Uranus cycle coincided with remarkable regularity with creative breakthroughs and historic milestones in music as in many other fields. But equally evident, works that were composed and premiered during these relatively brief alignments tended to reflect, like the overall cultural ethos of that moment, certain qualities that were highly suggestive of the Jupiter-Uranus archetypal complex itself, such as an especially high-spirited, celebratory, exuberant creative spirit. Thus Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, with their exhilarating virtuosity and vigor, a crowning achievement of the Baroque era, were brought forth during the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction of 1720–21. This too took place just after a longer Uranus-Pluto conjunction, the one before the opposition of the French Revolution, thus forming an exact cyclical sequence with the correlations cited above involving Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven, Wagner, and Stravinsky.
If we now turn to the history of literature, the 1720–21 period of the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction that brought Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos also coincided with Jonathan Swift’s commencing his great satire, Gulliver’s Travels. Alignments of the Jupiter-Uranus cycle regularly coincided with creative works in which astonishing magnitude or a surprising expansion of conventional size limits played a role. This can be understood as an expression of the Uranus? Jupiter dynamic vector, with the Promethean impulse suddenly liberating Jupiter’s archetypal impulse towards largeness and expansion and giving it creative embodiment in surprising ways. Beethoven’s Eroica was of course a classic example in the musical field in its unprecedented expansion of the size of the required orchestra, the length of each movement, and the length of the entire symphony—not to mention the magnitude of the sound itself—in all of these respects, far beyond the limits established by Mozart and Haydn. We see a very different creative inflection of this same theme of astonishing size in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, both in the Lilliputians’ experience of suddenly encountering the wondrously gigantic Gulliver and, conversely, in Gulliver’s own amazed experience of astounding size in Brobdingnag, the land of giants.
In the history of literature, which has so many significant authors and works and constitutes so large a database, both the synchronic and the diachronic patterns are especially rich and ramified. Each Jupiter-Uranus axial alignment consistently coincided with an unusual multiplicity of creative milestones in literature, and subsequent alignments of the same planets coincided with similar waves of literary creativity whose close archetypal and historical connection with the preceding alignments strongly suggested the existence of ongoing cyclical patterns of creative breakthrough.
For example, when
I investigated a literary epoch well-known for its sustained revolutionary character, the first two decades of the twentieth century, I examined possible correlations with the Jupiter-Uranus cycle involving those several writers who together brought about the radical transformation of modern literature at that time: Joyce, Proust, Kafka, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Stein, Lawrence, and Woolf. The Jupiter-Uranus conjunction that occurred in that general time period was within 15° of exactitude, typically the period of greatest archetypal intensity, in the fourteen months centered on the year 1914 that extended from December 1913 to January 1915.
When I reviewed the relevant biographies for this brief period, it was quickly clear that these specific fourteen months were pivotal for virtually every one of those writers, bringing the simultaneous emergence of an extraordinary number of landmark works in twentieth-century literature. After years of solitary writing and artistic development, Joyce published both of his first works, The Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, during these months. At this same time he began his masterpiece, Ulysses (completing it seven years later at the following Jupiter-Uranus opposition). T. S. Eliot moved from the United States to England at this time, the turning point in his career, and began his fertile association with Ezra Pound. Pound, who discovered and began the serial publication of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist that year, also discovered Eliot’s first major poem, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, that same year of 1914, published the first anthology of Imagist poetry, Des Imagistes, and, with Wyndham Lewis, began the Vorticist magazine Blast. In the same year William Butler Yeats published his Responsibilities and Other Poems, which similarly reflected the new modernist aesthetic, while Gertrude Stein published her most explicitly “cubist” volume of poems, Tender Buttons. Wallace Stevens published his first poems that year, while Robert Frost published North of Boston, which contained many of his best-known poems, such as Mending Wall and The Death of the Hired Man. D. H. Lawrence published his first volume of short fiction, The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, while also writing in these months the first of his greatest novels, The Rainbow. Franz Kafka during these same months wrote his first major novel, The Trial. And in the month just before the 15° point of the conjunction was reached, in November 1913, Marcel Proust published at his own expense the first volume of his masterpiece, À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past).
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