B000OVLIPQ EBOK

by Tarnas, Richard

  5. Part of the confusion generated by the clash of paradigms—modern scientific and ancient astrological—lay in the shifting meaning of ancient terms and concepts as used in later eras. For example, even in the more causal-mechanistic perspectives of later Hellenistic astrology, the planetary emanations that radiated their influences from the celestial spheres to the Earth were not merely physical forces as the modern mind thinks of them. They were as much spiritual and symbolic as they were physical and literal in nature; they permeated the world with their analogical currents and thus contained the possibility of multiple significations: i.e., they were archetypal.

  6. I have examined these several stages in the evolution of the archetypal perspective in the history of Western thought at greater length in The Passion of the Western Mind. For the Platonic doctrine of archetypal Forms and its complex relationship to Greek myth, see pp. 4–32. For Aristotle’s contrasting view of universals, see pp. 55–72. For later classical developments, see pp. 81–87. For Christian, medieval, and Renaissance developments, see pp. 106–11, 165–70, 179–91, and 200–21.

  7. An additional difference between Platonic and Jungian archetypes was emphasized by classical Jungians (e.g., Edward Edinger, Marie-Louise von Franz), who regard Platonic principles as inert patterns as compared with Jungian archetypes, which are seen as dynamic agencies in the psyche, independent and autonomous. The problem with this simple distinction is that Plato’s archetypal principles are of widely varying kinds, which shift in nature from dialogue to dialogue. While some are indeed inert patterns (e.g., the mathematical forms), others possess a spiritual dynamism whose epiphanic power transforms the philosopher’s being and whose ontological power moves the cosmos (the Good, the Beautiful). Similarly, Plato’s discussion of Eros in The Symposium suggests a psychological dynamism not unlike what one would find in a Jungian context (and, here, Freudian as well). There is more continuity between Plato’s Forms and the ancient gods than the inert-pattern characterization seems to indicate.

  The dynamism of universal forms becomes fully explicit in Aristotle, but at the expense of their numinosity and transcendence. In effect, Jung draws on different aspects of the Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions, integrating them with Freudian-Darwinian instincts and Kantian categories. Jung does not, however, always keep these differing and overlapping aspects of archetypes in view or sufficiently distinguished, which has produced confusion and controversy in many discussions of Jungian archetypes in recent decades (see the following note).

  8. When Jung made such statements as “…in the symbol the world itself is speaking” or “Synchronicity postulates a meaning which is a priori in relation to human consciousness and apparently exists outside man,” it is clear that he had transcended the Kantian epistemological framework with its decisive division between subjectively structured phenomena and unknowable noumena (things-in-themselves beyond the reach of human subjectivity). Archetypes whose meaning could be said to “exist outside man” and that inform both the human psyche and the “world itself” were clearly not bound by the Kantian structure of knowledge and reality.

  Yet in his own mind, as reflected in many statements both public and private, Jung loyally upheld the Kantian framework throughout his life, and never ceased to insist on its essential relevance and validity for his findings. The paradoxes, contradictions, and confusions of the Jung-Kant relationship deeply affected important dialogues in which Jung participated in the course of his life, and they have riddled Jung scholarship for decades. (See, for example, Stephanie de Voogd, “C. G. Jung: Psychologist of the Future, ‘Philosopher’ of the Past,” Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought [1977], pp. 175–82; Barbara Eckman, “Jung, Hegel, and the Subjective Universe,” Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought [1986], pp. 88–99; and many contributions from Wolfgang Giegerich.)

  Certainly Jung’s continuing loyalty to Kant was biographically understandable, given not only the enduring effect of his reading Kant and Schopenhauer (his entrée to Kant) in his youth but also the cultural and intellectual context in which he worked throughout his life. From the beginning of Jung’s career, Kant’s thought provided him with crucial philosophical protection vis-à-vis conventional scientific critiques of his findings. Jung could always defend his controversial discussions of spiritual phenomena and religious experience by saying that these were empirical data that revealed the structure of the human mind and had no necessary metaphysical implications. But as many commentators have noted, not only did Jung often make statements with vivid metaphysical implications and assumptions; in addition, the Kantian framework became less and less capable of assimilating the discoveries and theoretical advances of his later work, particularly in the area of synchronicity and what he now called the “psychoid” (psyche-like) archetype that he saw as informing both psyche and matter, challenging the absoluteness of the modern subject-object dichotomy. As a result, his statements on these epistemological and metaphysical issues became increasingly ambiguous and self-contradictory. (See, for example, Sean Kelly’s insightful discussion from the Hegelian perspective in Individuation and the Absolute [New York: Paulist Press, 1993], pp. 15–37.)

  I believe there was a further reason that the later Jung invoked the Kantian framework so often when he discussed archetypes. If I can try to sum up a complex situation briefly, it appears that Jung unwittingly conflated the issue of archetypal multivalence with the issue of whether archetypes can be directly knowable. On the one hand, Jung recognized and often stressed that archetypes are always observed and experienced in a diverse multiplicity of possible concrete embodiments, so that the full essence and meaning of the archetype must be regarded as fundamentally transcending its many particular manifestations. On the other hand, he often conflated this crucial insight with the quite separate epistemological issue of whether archetypes can be directly experienced and known as principles that transcend the human psyche, or only indirectly inferred by observing the configurations of psychological phenomena which are structured by archetypes that are ultimately “unknowable” in themselves (noumena). In his understandable attempt to preserve the multivalent indeterminacy of archetypes that transcend every particular embodiment, Jung called upon a Kantian framework of phenomenon and noumenon that entailed the unknowability of the archetypes in themselves, their humanly unreachable essence beyond every diverse manifestation.

  Jung seems not to have fully grasped the epistemological and ontological possibility of a genuine direct participation (in both the Platonic sense and the contemporary sense of co-creative enaction) in a dynamically multivalent archetype that in some sense remains indeterminate until concretely enacted. This theoretical limitation also informed and, I believe, helped produce Jung’s many contradictory and confusing statements about the unconscious and the psyche, and about various metaphysical and spiritual issues such as God and the God-image, that fueled his famous controversies with Martin Buber and Fr. Victor White.

  Jung’s occasional lack of clarity about the nature of archetypes seems also to have been increased by his unconscious conflation of two different Kantian ideas in his discussions of archetypes. Jung saw archetypes on the one hand as a priori forms and categories, and on the other hand as unknowable transcendent noumena that exist behind and beyond all phenomena (a point made by de Voogd). Thus for Jung, archetypes essentially fulfilled both functions in the Kantian framework—categories of experience and noumenal things-in-themselves—but he did not seem aware that he moved back and forth between these two separate functions in his various statements and formulations.

  Doubtless part of the confusion underlying Jung’s many discussions of archetypes reflects the extremely complex and enigmatic problem of projection— namely, how constellated archetypes can configure our lived reality and give meaning to our experience not only by shaping and constituting our perceptions but also, at times, by deeply distorting them. This issue is connected with another, equally comple
x and enigmatic. For in the background of Jung’s conflicting philosophical loyalties and statements loomed his lifelong struggle with the disenchanted modern cosmos, which he both took seriously and saw through, and which had similarly shaped and confused Kant’s philosophical struggles and formulations. Against the overwhelming contemporary scientific consensus on the disenchanted nature of the cosmos and the workings of nature, Jung could never be quite sure how much trust he should place in his spiritually revelatory observations and intuitions about a world embedded with purpose and meaning, even though the data repeatedly seemed to break out of a subjectivist or psychologistic confinement. So he hedged his bets by frequent allusions to Kant’s philosophical strictures (while reminding scientists that in their materialistic presuppositions they were in no different a position). Jung’s many ambiguous and contradictory statements about astrology reflect this same inner struggle with the disenchanted modern cosmos.

  Since Jung’s death, the extraordinary expansion of astrological research and evidence compared with the more limited astrological data Jung worked with, combined with a deeper philosophical and psychological understanding of the complex ontology and epistemology of archetypes, has helped to clarify the challenging issues with which he was increasingly confronted with each passing decade of his life and work. These issues have important philosophical implications beyond the fields of psychology and astrology. I believe that many of the major points of conflict and ambiguity in the postmodern mind about the social construction of knowledge, projection, subjectivism, relativism, pluralism, and participation will be helpfully illuminated by these developments in the archetypal astrological field.

  9. The ancient Greek root for the word “planet”—planetes— meant “wanderer” and signified not only Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn but also the Sun and Moon, i.e., all the visible celestial bodies that, unlike the fixed stars, moved through the sky in ways that differed from the simple single motion and eternal regularity of the diurnal westward movement of the entire heavens. Though a distinction is often made between planets and luminaries, the astrological tradition has generally retained the original more encompassing meaning, referring to the Sun and Moon as planets. One finds this usage in the European literary tradition as well, as in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida: “Therefore is the glorious planet Sol / In noble eminence enthroned and sphered.” The ambiguous definition of “planet” continues in a different form in astronomy today, with the recent discovery of Pluto-like objects in the Kuiper Belt placing in question the exact status of both Pluto and the new objects.

  10. See A. E. Taylor’s translation of Plato’s Philebus and Epinomis, with an introduction by R. Klibansky (London: Thomas Nelson, 1956).

  11. I first discussed the issue of Uranus’s archetypal meaning in a monograph entitled “Prometheus the Awakener,” written in 1978–79 and privately circulated among colleagues. A preliminary analysis intended mainly for the Jungian, archetypal psychology, and astrological communities, it was later published in the National Council of Geocosmic Research Monographs (1981) and, in slightly expanded form under the title “Uranus and Prometheus,” in Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought (1983), edited by James Hillman. One version or the other was published in several other astrological journals in Europe and the United States during the following decade. The monograph was later published as a small book in an updated version as Prometheus the Awakener, first in England (Oxford: Auriel Press, 1993), subsequently in the United States (Woodstock, Conn.: Spring Publications, 1995). Other discussions of the parallels between the astrological Uranus and the mythological Prometheus can be found in Stephen Arroyo, Astrology, Karma, and Transformation (1978), p. 40, the earliest mention of the correspondence of which I am aware, and in Liz Greene, The Art of Stealing Fire (London: CPA Press, 1996), a more recent, longer treatment that draws in part on my monograph.

  12. Galle and his assistant Heinrich d’Arrest discovered the new planet within 1° of the position predicted by LeVerrier, on September 23, 1846, during the first hour of their search at the Berlin Observatory after receiving his letter containing the prediction. A year earlier, the English mathematician John Couch Adams had hypothesized the existence and position of the new planet because of the observed Uranus perturbations, but his efforts to persuade English astronomers to conduct a search at that time were unsuccessful, and his estimate of the new planet’s position was somewhat less accurate than LeVerrier’s. For a discussion of recently uncovered evidence concerning Adams’s ambiguous role in the discovery, see Nick Kollerstrom, “Neptune’s Discovery: The British Case for Co-Prediction,” Science and Technology Studies, University College London, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ sts/nk/neptune/index.htm; and W. Sheehan, N. Kollerstrom, and C. Waff, “The Case of the Pilfered Planet,” Scientific American, December 2004.

  Neptune was actually first observed by Galileo in 1612, when he recorded it as a star of the 8th magnitude rather than a new planet. A similar history occurred in the case of Uranus, which was sighted but not identified as a planet several times prior to its discovery by Herschel; the earliest recorded instance was by John Flamsteed in 1690.

  13. William James: “In cases of conversion, in providential leadings, sudden mental healings, etc., it seems to the subjects themselves of the experience as if a power from without, quite different from the ordinary action of the senses or of the sense-led mind, came into their life, as if the latter suddenly opened into that greater life in which it has its source. The word ‘influx,’ used in Swedenborgian circles, well describes this impression of new insight, or new willingness, sweeping over us like a tide…. We need only suppose the continuity of our consciousness with a mother sea, to allow for exceptional waves occasionally pouring over the dam” (“Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine” [1898], in Essays in Religion and Morality [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982], pp. 93–94).

  14. I found that the most significant factors in natal and transit correlations, other than the planets and their major aspects, were first, planetary alignments with the Ascendant-Descendant (horizontal) axis and the Midheaven-IC (vertical) axis; second, planetary “midpoints,” configurations in which one planet is positioned precisely halfway between two other planets, or in close aspect to that point; and third, certain other planetary alignments, sometimes called “minor aspects,” such as the 45° and 135° aspects (semisquare and sesquisquare), and the 150° aspect (quincunx).

  Besides the signs and houses, other significant interpretive factors in both traditional and contemporary astrological practice include the elements (air, water, fire, earth), qualities (cardinal, fixed, mutable), rulerships, progressions and directions, returns and ingressions, other celestial bodies such as fixed stars and minor planets, locality charts, relationship charts, and harmonics. For the sake of simplicity and clarity in the present book, I have not incorporated these additional factors in the presentation of evidence; instead, I have limited the analysis to correlations involving major planetary aspects in world transits, personal transits, and natal charts. Because such a research program does not use the zodiacal signs as interpretive factors, it is unaffected by the complex issue of the two zodiacs, sidereal and tropical, the difference between which is produced by the precession of the equinoxes.

  15. The astronomical data used for calculations in the present book are based on the Swiss Ephemeris, which in turn is based on the most recent planetary and lunar ephemeris developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, DE405/406. All calculations were checked using the Solar Fire 5.0 program, which employs the Swiss Ephemeris and JPL computations.

  16. Generally speaking, archetypal correlations were evident for personal transits when the transiting planet was within 3°–5° before and after exact major aspect with the natal planet. The smaller figure represents the range of greater intensity and frequency of observed correlations, while the larger figure represents a penumbral range within which correlations we
re still observed but with lessening intensity. In personal transits, correlations tend to occur with greater frequency and intensity during a larger range of degrees before exact alignment and typically diminish within a smaller range after exact alignment. The concurrence or partial overlapping of other transits appeared to affect the range of this operative orb, with the archetypal character of the coinciding events showing corresponding complexities and inflections according to which planets were involved in the other transits.

  Because of variations caused by the planets’ apparent retrograde motion (which in the case of Uranus is produced by the slower-moving Uranus’s being viewed from the faster-moving Earth as both planets orbit the Sun), a transiting planet can move in and out of this range more than once in the course of a single transit. Though tending to occur in a wavelike continuum in coincidence with the transit’s degree of exactitude, archetypal correlations were generally in evidence from the first time the planets moved into the 3°–5° range to the last time they moved beyond it.

  The orb for personal transits was also affected by which transiting planet and which aspect were involved. For example, correlations with Mars transits consistently tended to begin somewhat earlier than with other planets, while correlations with Saturn transits consistently tended to continue longer after exact alignment had been reached. For all planets, the hard-aspect quadrature alignments tended to have larger orbs than the soft aspects; conjunctions and then oppositions had the largest (4°–5°), sextiles the smallest (2°–3°). A special case is that of the transiting conjunctions of an outer planet as it returns to its own natal position at the end of its full 360° cycle; here the operative orb appears to be especially large. As we will see in the next chapter, this was particularly evident in the case of the Saturn return at the end of its 291/2 year cycle.