Astrology as a New Model of Reality
ASTROLOGY AS A NEW MODEL OF REALITY
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ASTROLOGY AND ITS RELATION TO JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY
By: Michael McMullin 1993
INTRODUCTION
Part One : The Psychological Types.
Chapter One: Astrology and the Psychological Types.
Chapter Two: The Philosophy of the Types.
Part Two: Non-Aristotelian Logic.
Chapter Three: Levels of Reality.
Chapter Four: "Think in Other Categories".
Part Three: The Planetary Archetypes.
Chapter Five: The Inner Planets.
Chapter Six: Jupiter and Saturn.
Part Four: Beethoven.
The Outer Planets and the Embodiment of an Archetype.
CHAPTER ONE -SYNOPSIS
Jungian psychology is the most consistent with astrology.
Astrologers who relate to it.
No serious attempt yet to correlate the two fields; but this possibility
exists in the area of Psychological Types. The importance of this
work of Jung's, and its neglect.
No objective method exists of determining types.
The four functions and the four elements.
Their correspondence: Sensation/Earth, Feeling/Water, Thinking/Air, Intuition/Fire.
The polarity of the functions and their relation to types.
The importance of knowing a person's type.
Prevailing ideas on judging this through the horoscope.
Contributions on this subject by Karen Hamaker-Zondag.
The function type known by the Sun-sign.
Superior, auxilliary and inferior functions.
Analysis of the horoscope accordingly.
The Ascendant and the inferior function. Can a type change?
Zodiacal and functional polarities.
Imitating or posing as a different type from one's real one.
Planets above and below the horizon confused with type.
The extravert/introvert orientation and Mercury.
Prometheus and Epimetheus.
The Zodiac and extr./intr. orientation.
Other astrological factors capable of obscuring the typology.
Introvert intuition.
Exravert intuition. Intuition confused with feeling.
Feeling and psychism.
Feeling as valuation, and in relation to Venus and sensation.
Venus in Taurus and Libra. Mars and feeling. Feeling and emotion.
The Moon and libido.
Psychic energy (libido) and its manifestation through the personal planets.
Aesthetic experience and the functions. Sensation and music.
Air and fire dominant in poetry.
Painting and water signs.
Colour, Neptune and water.
Examples of painters. Einstein an extraverted Piscean.
Space, Neptune and extraversion.
Relativity theory and Uranus opposite Neptune.
Galileo. Rudolf Steiner.
Steiner's horoscope.
Compared with Jung, as psychic versus intuitive.
The unconscious (within) or spirits (without). Reincarnation.
Mutually exclusive approaches, which may meet in the future.
Horoscopes of Galileo, Einstein, Steiner and Jung.
CHAPTER TWO - SYNOPSIS
The contrast between the extravert and introvert viewpoints is
fundamental, and characterises the whole history of philosophy.
Realism and idealism. Plato & Aristotle, the Gemini twins,
divine & mortal. The Piscean Age and the Virgo-Pisces axis.
Christianity & the fish symbol. The cross and the mythos of the
incarnation into matter. The two halves of the Piscean Age.
The Renaissance, and the Greco-Roman culture.
Descartes & Spinoza.
Ego versus "Nature", as opposed to the unitive world view.
From unity to diversity, and a necessary return towards unity on a
higher or more conscious level; an integration of consciousness
with the Self.
Prometheus and Epimetheus.
Mozart and Beethoven. The additional differentiation of
types in astrology, giving 24 distinct types in place of 8.
Goethe & Schiller.
Association of Taurus with rationalist and materialist
philosophers. Hobbes, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau. Hume, Johnson.
Bertrand Russell, Marx, Lenin. Taurus also as sign of
Venus and higher sense-perception. Steiner. The "astral" sphere.
Higher energies. Relativity of realities, outer and inner. Kant.
Space and time. Kant.
A priori & a posteriori, the observer and the observed,
the duality of consciousness.
Rationalism and the repression of the "subjective". Sense
perception and intuition, the other pole of perception.
Reason and Understanding. Hegel.
Jung as successor to Kant.
Jung and Freud as paired opposites. Freud and Adler.
Jung and Steiner as paired opposites.
The objective existence of archetypal beings.
CHAPTER THREE - SYNOPSIS
Extraversion and introversion as orientation towards space and
time. An understanding of these in terms of dimensionality.
The fourth coordinate. 3 & 4 in psychology, the physical and the
spiritual.
The fourth dimension and the unconscious.
"Space-time" and the three dimensions of time.
Gradations of matter, and scale. All times are relative.
The incommensurability of different cosmoses.
The solar system and the laws of harmony.
Energy in circular motion becomes matter. The archetype Saturn.
The non-material body, the astrum or energy-sheath.
The unconscious and the planetary archetypes in the
soul. Charted in the horoscope.
The world of the opposites, spirit and matter.
The uniting factor, the symbol - the "language of the
invisible world". Symbolism as the aesthetic experience.
The logic of correspondences.
Archetypes.
Symbolism in art and music.
Jungian archetypes and astrological symbols.Analysis of archetypes.
Personified archetypes as planetary functional principles.
The question of where archetypes come from.
Individual patterns and the horoscope. The life in
relation to this, or "fate", karma.
Objective reality of ideas or thought-forms.
Thinking in symbols.
The archetype a synthesis of the extravert and introvert points of view.
Jung and Steiner as spiritual teachers for our time.
The two orientations in art.
The spirit world and the unconscious.
Myth and historicity. The Gospel story.
CHAPTER FOUR – Synopsis
The suppression of intuition with the maximum descent of thinking into
matter.
The need for a new conceptual language, to reintegrate with intuition, while
retaining the gains made in analytical thinking. The dualism of thinking/
feeling. The ego and the Self.
Leo-Aquarius - the signs for intuitive thinking. The neglect among preachers
of change of the new forms and paradigm of knowledge required.
The nullity of much of our current conceptual language. As against this,
thinking in correspondences.
Thinking, and words, are for developing consciousness; but at present form
the principal obstacle to this. The proper development of language is the
yoga of knowledge.
The "Spirit Mercurius". Mercurius in alchemy, and its double nature.
An alchemy of the mind. Key concepts of our present world view:
Causality; Free-will.
The incompatibility of free-will and causality. Causality as mechanics,
and its irrelevance outside our particular time-scale, or world view.
The confusion and blocking of thought caused by causality, or the isolating
of single factors.
The logic of causality, as seen against the inter-relatedness of everything,
and the subjectivity of our "laws of nature".
Ouspensky on the perceiving of hidden connections in simple phenomena,
and the resulting sense of wonderment. Synchronicity and astrology as the
two most obvious manifestations of this.
Meaning, the principle opposed to both causality and chance.
Astrology is the only systematic study of synchronicity, and is
the science of meaning.
Astrologers and causality, or looking for "mechanisms".
The impossibility of "influence" in considering transits.
The still greater impossibility of "mechanism" in the case of progressions.
Life pervades the cosmos and is the prima materia, also in the origin of minerals.
No dualism of life and non-life; the higher cannot evolve from
the lower.
The animals evolved from man. Evolution as increasing differentiation
of the microcosm.
Astrologers and free-will - choice or destiny. "Free-will" as consciousness.
Our limited understanding in interpreting the horoscope. Horoscopes of twins.
What a horoscope actually is or represents.
Thinking in terms of higher dimensions, "predetermined" also means nothing.
Causality, free-will and determinism. Spinoza on a creator outside of creation. Evolution or the change of levels.
"Free-will" synonymous with degree of consciousness, or integration of the thinking function. Fate, free-will and time all comprised in the archetype Saturn.
Consciousness as the key concept. Free-will, causality and Accident.
Determinism as making a quaternity of mutually incompatible concepts.
This can be replaced by the experience and need of Meaning and Creativity.
Symbolised in astrology by Venus and Jupiter. We fulfil these according to our competence, or state of being.
We are not unconscious by choice.
In harmony with the Tao, and "letting go", or "not-doing". This does not
mean inaction. Action, or the Mars principle, the basis of creativity.
Creativity related to the need for meaning. The universe as continuous creation.
Creativity as the process of acquiring knowledge or becoming conscious. The new logic of higher consciousness.
CHAPTER FIVE - SYNOPSIS
Consciousness and language. The planets as mythological motives.
The nature of archetypes. Astrology as the language of archetypes, for a new orientation of thought.
The planetary archetypes. Mercury as psychopomp.
Mercury as child.
Hermes as inventor of the alphabet and sciences. Mercury as Trickster.
Hermetic philosophy.
The solar system and the Sun as one system the key to the planetary psychological archetypes.
The various planetary polarities.
The Sun in relation to consciousness and ego.
The Sun as the atman, or spirit.
The Ascendant.
Ascendant as attributes or aptitudes.
The Moon. The womb of life on earth and the etheric body.
The Moon and magnetism.
The statistical and periodic "coincidences" of the Moon.
The Moon, the fourth house, and emotional energy.
The source.
Father and mother imagos.
The mythology of the Moon. The dark of the Moon.
The Moon as archetypal mother. Persephone and the Kore.
Demeter-Kore merging into anima, a wholly different archetype.
The Moon and Venus.
Venus/Aphrodite.
Anima and animus.
Mars and Venus as a polarity. Mars as activity.
The concept "will".
Mars as desire. Mars as animus, Venus anima.
Mars and the adrenal glands.
CHAPTER SIX – SYNOPSIS
The four quadrants of the horoscope and the seven-year periods of development.
The inner planets and the lower hemisphere of inner development. The three modes.
The third quadrant
The Saturn cycles.
The ninth house and Jupiter. Zeus as reigning deity in Greece.
The astronomical features of Jupiter. The mythology of the solar hero.
The Mercury-Jupiter polarity embodying the life of the hero.
Consciousness not equivalent to light. Prometheus as the prototype of the hero.
Creativity and the "triangle of fire" as the path of the hero.
Jupiter and Venus and the evolution of values.
The octave of the seven planetary archons.
Saturn as Cronus, time; Zeus rules space.
The Saturnian limits. Saturn the archetype of the Fall.
Saturn as Lucifer. The Sun-Saturn polarity.
Saturn and consciousness. Light and darkness.
Good and evil. Colours and light and darkness.
Colours as feeling values.
Saturn as masculine principle.
The Moon-Saturn polarity, mother and father.
The father and the ego.
Saturn as ego.
The ego and "the self". The "marriage of power and consciousness".
Evolution and involution.
The shadow.
Saturn and the shadow. Personified forms of the shadow.
The shadow, darkness and Matter.
What is "the self"?
A union of spirit and matter. The Circle and the Cross. The need for a strong ego.
The path of initiation. The Wise Old Man archetype.
Manifestations of this archetype. Merlin.
The different sides of the Saturn archetype.
The archetypes that appear as human figures; Dominants, which
correspond with the planetary archetypes.
The Terrible Mother; Hades and Poseidon.
The fourth quadrant.
INTRODUCTION
We live in an extraordinarily compartmentalised society, in our thinking, a society of enclaves, and of innumerable cul-de-sac, all studiously disconnected with one another. It is a state of affairs resembling the fishing communities on the coast of Newfoundland, where life is quite primitive and climate and natural conditions very severe. The communities are diverse, belonging to various sects and creeds such as Plymouth Brethren, Irish Catholic or Presbyterian, and they are separated from one another by deep fjords and inlets of the sea, so that there is no communication between them and they are virtually isolated, in winter only accessible by helicopter.
Intellectually our whole civilisation tends to live in this state. We have the involuntary or deliberate segregation of data or knowledge into separate, strictly partitioned-off fields of inquiry which are not supposed to encroach upon one another. In the academic world any over-stepping of these boundaries, guilds or territorial claims is, one is given to feel, almost morally reprehensible, and certainly a breach of protocol. The correct form even is to disclaim all knowledge of anything outside one's own speciality, to make a virtue of ignorance. In the non-academic world there is an amazing proliferation of cults, gurus and methods of enlightenment, each being the only one and excluding all others. In both worlds, academic and non-academic, people hit on some part or relative truth, on some limited facet of reality, and construct a theory to inflate and magnify this fragment into an independent viewpoint, a whole philosophy, through ignorance or avoidance of all the other parts and facets of the whole. Naturally each cult or theory then fosters carefully a one-track or tunnel vision, under the heading of loyalty, faith or perseverance; while adherence to a single leader or -ism avoids the burden of having to think for oneself.
But besides this compulsive one-sidedness and separation of subject-matter in all our studies there is the broad overall division between the mainstream thinking in Western Civilisation and the undercurrent, or counter-culture, which represents an entirely different and compensatory point of view. The mainstream can be followed back to Descartes, or even, in certain respects, to the Renaissance, and leads, via the Encyclopaedists and the "Enlightenment", to the "scientific" materialism of the 19th and 20th centuries, and "rationalism". This stream to a large extent determines history, and the general patterns into which phenomena fall along its course. It follows a cyclic course, described by Spengler, and is now at the end of its cycle. Spengler's work is translated as "The Decline of the West", but his title is "Der Untergang des Abendlandes", and Untergang means "going under" or "setting" - much more than "declining". It means the end of the cycle of Western Culture, which started at the end of the Greco-Roman era, and settled into the thinking pattern we know today during or after the sixteenth century, after taking that turn about half-way through its cycle. A counter-culture however continued to exist, underground, in spite of official persecution, and it is mainly this that is manifest in great art, besides in necessarily hidden transmissions of earlier wisdom such as the Rosicrucian and Alchemical traditions, and eccentric figures such as Paracelsus or Boehme. This represents the life-line of non-specialization which preserves the potentiality of further development, and may be compared for example with the evolution of the human hand, which has kept its phenomenal versatility just by avoiding fixation as fin, wing, hoof or claws.
Today, in the 1990's, the mainstream has more or less disintegrated into "Post-Modernism", but remains in office in its inert form in the academies, governments, and as the public and accepted point of view. At the same time it is becoming more and more embattled and its dogmas increasingly difficult to maintain against powerful counter-influences, now even coming from within its own citadel of science, if only from its advanced Élite.
To maintain the intellectual status quo it is necessary to be strong-willed, to keep one's mind in the correct groove, without looking to left or right. Or it may be that the collective inertia provides the strength to keep on course, in spite of everything, or the force of fate or inevitability. Whatever it is, the established rules continue to prevail in academic and official disciplines, and material values and mechanical causality remain the only recognised criteria. There have always been strong advocates of a different and opposite point of view, even within the academic world, but they are ignored or not understood by the mainstream, which rolls along regardless, and cannot be turned aside from its obsession. The figures who are selected as the important and decisive thinkers of each period are an arbitrary choice, confined to those who are going with the current, while much more valuable and in reality important ones are side-tracked and quickly forgotten. They are not in fashion, they contradict the general trend, or the compulsive flow of the Untergang. The momentum of the whole system cannot be stopped or turned aside, it has to continue to its natural end. All who cannot stand on their own feet or think for themselves have to go with the tide, and subscribe to destruction.
In this atmosphere it can easily seem futile to try to offer any meaningful thinking in any field whatever. For meaning consists just in seeing the inter-connectedness of everything rather than in maintaining separateness; and in understanding universal principles that are manifested everywhere. For instance if everything manifests in cycles, from atomic particles to planets, then history cannot be different; while the phases of cycles correspond throughout the universe, regardless of scale, and all are related within a whole, of cycles within cycles. Nineteenth century science studies laws governing the apparent behaviour of matter, but concedes wholes only reluctantly - such as the solar system - which have no further significance outside the immediate mechanics of matter, and exist only accidentally against a background of chaos. Late twentieth centry science on the other hand is studying Chaos, and finding an unsuspected, seemingly non-material and irrational order as a background to that. This has to do with patterns, that appear on different scales at the same time, and with cycles - that is, with discontinuity. It has been called this century's third great revolution in the physical sciences - the others being relativity theory and quantum theory; but the official mainstream thinking has not got the message of any of them, and is still in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Academic philosophy ignores most of the significant thinking of this century, and carries on as though it didn't exist, behind closed doors, in a kind of intra-mural incestuous relationship with itself and its own conventions and jargon. Ostensibly occupied with the process of thinking, it won't have anything to do with psychology, which is the study of the psyche, from which thinking, and feeling, and perception - all sources of knowledge actually arise; and yet it continually makes statements about mind, will, reason, epistemology, without caring to know what it is talking about. It maintains a rigorously extraverted standpoint without being aware of this, or knowing what it means. Nor does it care to look too closely at the question of whether any of its terms have any real meaning, or whether they are merely subjective abstractions or meaningless noises; so it prefers likewise to ignore Count Alfred Korzybski and his study of semantics (Science and Sanity 1933). The field of spiritual awareness, so much the concern of Eastern philosophies - which one might call practical philosophy, as opposed to mere theorising - is likewise excluded from its consideration, since, ignoring psychology, it doesn't understand the nature and role of intuition and its relation to the thinking process or knowledge generally. Spiritual exercises of all kinds are also mental exercises, designed to focus the mind and expand the range of consciousness; or, if we can say in this context that in our ordinary condition today we are unconscious, and sleepwalking, the aim of practical philosophy is to make us more conscious. But it is not the concern of academic reasoners to be conscious; their whole discipline is predicated as a game for the unconscious.
Occultism and esoteric philosophy are also of course outside the pale of approved thinking, because they deal with a reality beyond the material, although at one time God was a legitimate subject for the school-men. But metaphysics has been superceded by "existentialism". "Rationalism" and "positivism" are hostile alike to recognising empirical reality and to deductive reasoning based on this, or they could not ignore one of the best thinkers of this century, P.D. Ouspensky, and a work like his Tertium Organum ; nor that of his pupil Rodney Collin, The Theory of Celestial Influence, which deals with the question of scale, and correspondences on different scales, which is precisely where the mathematicians and scientists of "Chaos Theory" now find themselves groping. All these outside researches however fit together, and constitute a complete revolution in thinking. By ignoring them, orthodox or established thinking in any subject is remaining doggedly purblind and refusing to advance or understand anything.
Art criticism, the understanding of the arts, and the assessment of individual artists or works, or of trends or modes, is impossible on this basis, since there is no way of deciding what anything means, or whether it has any meaning. Art historians pretend to judge these things without knowing the meaning of basic symbols, or having any idea of what a painting or a style is actually saying, even if it occurs to them that it is saying anything. They will talk about something like cubism without a suspicion of what a cube stands for, or the number four, or without any notion of the fact that numbers have a primal significance. Since interpreting art is very like interpreting dreams and is concerned with the collective unconscious, these specialists in details are simply not equipped to see the point of anything. Musicology is an outstanding example of this; how can one talk intelligently about music without understanding its aesthetics? And how understand aesthetics without understanding the psychological functions, the process and nature of symbolism and how it applies to musical expression, the whole philosophy of meaning and its spiritual implications? Yet musicologists have heard of none of these things, and go round repeating such mindless saws as "Music has no meaning outside of itself", and, virtually uneducated, undertake to explain or interpret the highest and most direct spiritual expressions of our culture.
The situation is similar in History, Archaeology - how can these be understood without understanding the relation of every phenomenon to everything else, and above all as a manifestation of human psychology, and spiritual evolution? Spengler is the historian who came nearest to doing this, and exemplifying the right method. In early and pre-history Velikovsky, a follower of Freud, uncovered a whole range of evidence and facts that completely contradict established theory, and even intruded on the physical sciences and astronomy. He became the victim of what amounted to an organised persecution and coverup by established science. Many of his conclusions and predictions in the latter domain were later proved correct by space-probes, while the evidence he produced in the historical and geological fields is dealt with by turning a blind eye, even though carbon-dating has vindicated him in some of these too. Since his death, Velikovsky has been taken up by organised supporters who, though marching under the banner of inter-disciplinary thinking, display in their turn the usual blinkered vision and refuse to look at, for example, astrology, which could have a very important bearing on many of their conclusions. Thus the followers of all individual innovators, teachers, or systems, as much as the adherents of conventions, traditions and collective beliefs and convictions, are equally reluctant to leave their grooves and think for themselves. Each teaching or point of view has to become rigidified and incapable of further development - hence false. The same applies to religions, mythologies, philosophies, all of which express important truths from some aspect, in some time or context, but become obsolete from the moment they are isolated and seen as dogma; or when the one facet is mistaken for the whole. On the overall social scale all institutions, education, medicine, and the whole administrative and social system, are based upon such rigid, obsolescent, partial and one sided-premises, which depend upon excluding whatever does not fit in with them.
Psychologically such an attitude is an obvious and classical symptom of neurosis, and the ruling mythos of the second half of Western Culture or the Piscean Age is Faust, who sells his soul (his feminine half) to Mephistopheles, the spirit of denial. Goethe portrays the latter as a man of the world, the representative of mundane, material and purely rational values which are associated with the conscious world and the masculine side of man. In favour of this over-assertion of the masculine, the feminine and unconscious side has to be repressed and denied. This results in schizophrenia, and Mephisto was certainly, and is, a Post-Modernist. In him we find personified the whole spirit of reductionism. This is the reverse of symbolism, which perceives the divine (the whole) in everything; here all is reduced to the commonplace. We have an elaborate literary demonstration of this - a modern Faust - in Joyce's Finnegans Wake, a kind of chaotic nightmare in which the whole of history can be found scrambled. Based on the symbol of the Fall as one of its leit-motifs, it is a Fall from which there is no getting up, and no resurrection. Like Faust, it plunges into the dream of history, but it always abutts in H.C. Earwicker (Here Comes Everybody) and the language of the utterly banal. Not the other way round; it does not, like Faust Part II, lead into the realm of the archetypes. In Finnegan's Faust there is no Mephistopheles; but it is Mephisto who is writing it. Its logical consequence is Beckett, who reduces all life to a couple of tramps satirically waiting for Godot, or another who lives in a garbage can.
Repression always turns destructive, and as pointed out by Wolfgang Döbereiner, this was shown in the manic orgy of destruction in the French Revolution (the dark side of the Enlightenment). For the same reason the prevailing collective civilisation is still chronically destructive, and even when making gestures towards ecology and conservation, it finds other means to continue on course.
In reality it is only breadth of vision and wholeness that can enable us to evaluate ideas and experiences, by seeing their place in the whole, and by comparing those in one field with their counterparts in all the others. The ultimate aim must be the integration and coordination of all knowledge, for nothing can be understood in a vacuum, or in and for itself, since nothing exists in this condition. Specialisation gives a more thorough knowledge of different aspects of reality, but on condition that the whole is never lost to view - or in other words that correspondences are understood, or principles that apply to everything, and that it is fundamentally grasped that everything is related to everything else. Without this understanding we have mere pedantry or intellectualism, while with it we have a different kind of thinking, a good name for which is vertical thinking, 1 for it is thinking through levels rather than on one level only. It is thinking in terms of the correspondences between one set of coordinates and another, or between manifestations of the same principle or pattern in different guises in any category or field of observation or on any level, physical (in the outer world), bodily or mental. Another name for this is thinking in symbols, and if we ordinarily, in our culture, think on one plane only, or on the material level, and in linear sequences, thinking vertically affords by comparison a three-dimensional view of reality and of the interconnectedness of all its aspects, and it presents us with a different kind of logic, that is non-Aristotelian.
The prototype for this kind of thinking is astrology, which deals in the most fundamental and primordial kind of archetypes that recur in all cultures, as far back as is known, and prove to be basic components of the human psyche. These are principles, and while they have planetary and zodiacal names, which they share with Greek and Roman gods, the solar system, like everything else, is found empirically and by observation to correspond to these principles, and to represent for us their most objective, universal or macrocosmic manifestation. For this reason the language of astrology is the one best suited to showing everything in its universal context, and for the coordination of thinking in every field. Its symbols apply in everything and are manifest on all levels.
One of the thinkers of broadest vision of this century, and for Western Civilisation as a whole, is C.G. Jung. He is referred to by his friend Laurens van der Post as one of the greatest universal personalities since the Renaissance, and there can be no doubt that he is the single most important philosopher of this century, though never mentioned in philosophy departments. Jung made it clear that to understand ourselves, and therefore any thinking at all, on any subject, it is necessary to understand psychology, since every manifestation of humanity originates in the psyche. One of Jung's most important and far-reaching contributions to the development of our thinking in general is his concept of the collective unconscious and of the archetypes, or primordial patterns or principles that are built into it, and hence form unconscious components in every individual. As a consequence of this, Jung was one of the few in our time who understood the importance of re-learning to think symbolically, or vertically. There are few astrologers even who appreciate what this really means, or the real significance in this context of astrology, and its relation to psychology.
Whether astrologers recognise it or not, all applied astrology is psychological, and the birth chart notates a particular chord of planetary or psychological harmonies in terms of psychological archetypes. The study of the psyche is of paramount importance for astrologers as for everyone else, and if the birth chart has anything to do with character then this study is obviously essential for its realistic interpretation. If moreover, "character is destiny", then even event-orientated astrologers cannot dispense with psychology, and astrology and psychology are virtually one subject.
Equally, whether psychologists want to know about it or not, the horoscope of birth is a map of the individual psyche, of the particular orientation and karma of the individual, and of the patterns and lessons that he or she has to work through in this life. And there is no other possibility of such a map. What is required therefore is a correlation between the concepts used in psychology and those of astrology, remembering that psychology in our sense has only just started, while astrology, as far as we can see back, has always been there, and is probably as old, in some form, as humanity; which means that it is not based on fluctuating viewpoints or theories, dogmas or subjective beliefs, but on empirical reality, although it needs to be developed - that is, our understanding of it - in parallel with modern depth psychology.
Astrology can in a way be regarded as the practical demonstration of psychology, or its phenomenology. The two disciplines are equally fundamental and universal, are complementary and essential to one another, two sides of the same coin. As both are studies of the unconscious, they more than anything else are felt as a threat to the one-sidedly conscious and extraverted attitude of the present. Their universalising and holistic, as well as analytic tendency is no less felt as a threat by all one-sided cults and teachings, and both are nearly always pointedly denounced by gurus dependent on a personal following and on the unquestioning assent of their followers. But taken together they amount to a Unified Field Theory, and can fulfil the function of the coordination of all knowledge. At least they can do this for the immediate present and the coming astrological age of Aquarius, since they represent thought-forms consistent with a radical change in the collective concept of reality. They constitute a method, not rigid concepts, and form the language of a new holistic way of seeing things, capable of unlimited development. They are based on intuition, on Understanding (Verstand) rather than Reason (Vernunft); in astrological terms on ninth house thinking (Jupiter) rather than third (Mercury). What follows is intended as a conribution to this development.
I may well repeat here the quotation from Montaigne with which H.P.B. ends her introductory pages to The Secret Doctrine:
"I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the string that ties them."
PART ONE
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES
CHAPTER ONE
ASTROLOGY AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES
Among all the conflicting schools of psychology that of Jung is one which represents a world view consistent with that of astrology, and as one becomes familiar with Jung's thought, one realises to an increasing extent that he is one of the great teachers of our age, and that his importance for the future and the development of a new level of thinking is parallel to that of astrology itself. It stands to reason therefore that these two modes of thought should complement one another and be integrated. How far this is possible is an important subject for our studies.
There is a considerable school of astrologers who relate to Jungian psychology and among them are some of the best thinkers in astrology today. This movement was pioneered and fathered by Dane Rudhyar, who can be claimed on the astrological side as a teacher and philosopher of comparable stature to Jung himself, and a great sage. Among its present representatives may be mentioned Stephen Arroyo, Alexander Ruperti, Liz Greene, and in German, Thomas Ring was an important writer who should be taken into account. Karen Hamaker-Zondag is the only writer so far as we are aware who has made any attempt at a systematic correlation of astrology with Jungian psychology, although with her first three books published in English she has not gone very far. Other references from the one study to the other have been more incidental, often of the nature of extempore if not wild guesses, with the guessers contradicting one another, while practitioners and therapists who are conversant with and do use both techniques do not seem to take seriously the possibility of correlating them more precisely.
There is however one area in which such a possibility certainly exists, and this is where Jung made what is probably his other most important contribution to thought, in his work Psychological Types. This work is very extensive and very detailed, and more than three quarters of it is a discussion, ranging over the history of Western Culture, of the introvert-extravert polarity, a discussion pregnant with immense possibilities, capable of putting this history, particularly in the context of philosophy, in an entirely new light. It is also of decisive importance in the assessment of the character of individuals, whether historical or immediate, as well as of whole cultures or ages. In spite of this, and in spite of the fact that Jung's terms "introvert" and "extravert" have become current usage, nobody appears to have taken serious notice of this revolutionary work, even among Jung's close associates. The other quarter of the book, "A General Description of the Types", is devoted to a quite detailed delineation of each of the four function types, sensation feeling, thinking and intuition, in both its extravert and introvert form, and these delineations are remarkably accurate, true to life, and obviously of primary importance in understanding individual character and attitude, no less than in clinical analysis and in dealing with neurosis. It is hard to find, however, even among analysts, or those proposing themselves as exponents of Jung's teachings, any real understanding of this subject, or even any evidence of careful study of Jung's descriptions of the types. People decide upon their own type from a subjective point of view, or from wishful thinking, without giving consideration to all the issues involved, or how they actually manifest the type to which they really belong, more objectively considered.
The issue is in fact not a simple one, and often quite obscure, and the reason it has not received proper attention or been taken seriously is precisely that there has been no objective method of determining a person's type. Without this the whole thing falls to the ground, and this major body of Jung's work cannot be put to practical use. Deciding upon the type to which a person belongs is only guess-work. Obviously Jung himself could decide in the case of his patients, from clinical experience, or he could not have described the types so decisively; but even he could make a mistake about historical characters - for instance Goethe and Schiller.
The four functions described by Jung are of course not discovered by him, or in any way new, as the same quaternity has always existed in various forms, from the four cardinal points of the compass, or the four beasts of the apocalypse, to the old descriptions of the four temperaments as Phlegmatic, Melancholic, Sanguine and Choleric. They also correspond to the four elements fire, air, water, earth, the four gates of the city, and the basic quartering of every circle. The functions of feeling, sensation and thinking are obvious ways in which we apprehend the world, and present themselves as components in any analysis of this process, as for example in aesthetics and in discussing the nature of symbolism. The fourth function, intuition, is not so obvious, since it relates to the unconscious; but it comes into play in the faculty of apprehending symbolism, or relating to the whole (apprehending meaning). Jung's contribution is in applying this fourfold division to psychology and describing the resulting eight types when each is considered as either introvert or extravert.
The four elements are factors which are fundamental to astrology, and the twelve signs of the Zodiac are divided among these elements, three belonging to each. The interpretation of the planetary symbols is also largely determined by this division, since each planet is associated with one or two signs; while the circle of the horoscope is quartered by the cardinal cross, the four points of which belong respectively to the four elements. Astrology, as a psychological analysis, makes full use of the nature of these elements, both in characterising the signs and in assessing the manner in which each planet is influenced by the sign and element in which it is found in the individual horoscope. There is no doubt about these matters, as a simple and objective calculation produces the horoscope, while the interpretation of the distribution of the elements has evolved over the centuries, or more correctly, over millennia, and does not depend upon anyone's opinion, but is open to corroboration by anyone who takes the trouble to go into it. It depends solely upon empirical observation, like Jung's psychological conclusions.
When it comes to aligning astrology with modern psychology (Jungian psychology) we must first decide which element corresponds to each of the functions. This is not difficult, and for once there is virtual unanimity among astrologer/psychologists who have given their minds to this exercise. Sensation is the sensory perception of the material world, our only means of awareness of matter and objects, and is very clearly represented by the element earth, the densest of the elements, and the solid state. In astrology, basic perception of the body and the senses belongs to the sign Taurus; while the discrimination and definition of objects and forms belong to the other two earth signs, Virgo and Capricorn. In Virgo, which is the second sign of Mercury, we have the analysis and utilisation of sensations, and in Capricorn, Saturn's sign, we have the definition of forms (outlines) and establishment of structures.
The next state in the order of density is liquid, and the element water. That this represents the feeling function is born out by every kind of association, astrological and otherwise. Feelings are flowing and fluctuating, they belong to the lunar or feminine side of man, and are changeable, mobile, can sweep one away and be tempestuous. The Moon influences liquids, attracts the tides, and rules the fundamental, formative, that is procreative water sign Cancer, which symbolises the primordial seas where life was nurtured, or the embryonic fluid and the womb. Water is psychologically and archetypally a symbol of the unconscious, where consciousness is nurtured, while in astrology the Moon has strong associations with the unconscious, which is where feelings come from. It is through the feeling function that we empathise with people and relate to them, and strong feelings create an aura that is almost tangible, but which we pick up through our feeling function. Of the other two water signs, Scorpio is associated with depths, strong or turbulent underground currents (its rulership by Mars), and with the waters of Lethe, or the Styx, with death and regeneration (Pluto); while Pisces, ruled by Neptune, is the vast ocean, limitless extension, and, psychologically, the unconscious itself.
After liquid, the next level in mobility or refinement of vibrations is the gaseous state, represented by the element air; in terms of functions, thinking. Thinking is obviously more mobile, volatile and much faster than feeling; it is more psychic and less physical. Using the air itself, it is the principal medium of communication through sound. It is under Mercury, the winged messenger and god of conceptual thinking and words, ruler of the air sign Gemini. The organs of communication are twins, the lungs, which also take in the breath of life, the pneuma, and the ears, which receive the sounds, and these come under Gemini, which rules communication with the immediate environment. Mercury rules a second sign, the earth sign Virgo, and this is associated with the practical application of thinking, through the hands, also paired organs, which apply thinking to the material world in manipulating it in work and crafts; and with discriminatory, empirical and analytical thinking. Of the other air signs, Libra is associated with a higher or more creative order of pure thinking in aesthetics and the arts. As one of the signs of Venus, it is the application of values to thinking, and intimate communication in close relationships. Aquarius, the third air sign, symbolises universal communication, a higher level of thinking, and the brotherhood of man. Ruled by Uranus, it represents electromagnetic vibrations, the scientific revolution, a transformation and new order of thinking, including astrology itself. Uranian thinking is that of the right brain, left brain thinking coming under Mercury:
"The astrological image of the aquarian period is an image of a man which, according to Jung, represents the Anthropos as an image of the Self, or of the greater inner personality which lives in every human being and in the collective psyche. He pours water "(the 'water of life')" from a jug into the mouth of a fish"..(Pisces)...(Marie-Louise von Franz) 2
The fourth function is intuition, and the remaining element fire. Fire is a state of a higher level of vibrations than the gaseous, and really beyond the condition of matter and into the psychic. Jung defines intuition as perception of the unconscious, that is, of the collective unconscious, or the higher self. Intuition, like fire, is not a part of the material realm, and is independent of time and space; it is a fourth dimension, and fire represents spirit. The Sun in the horoscope is the point of innermost being - Rudhyar calls it the point of emanation of the Self; the Sun sign indicates the inner and spiritual nature of the individual. The Sun rises in Aries, the first fire sign, at the spring equinox, and is said to be "exalted" in Aries. It is ruler of Leo, the sign of its hottest period in August. The fire signs represent energy and creativity, which is initiated in Aries, the sign of germination, or the incarnating individual. It finds expression in Leo as individual creation or self-expression. In the third fire sign, Sagittarius, this spiritual impulse reaches out into the wider dimension, to reunite with the cosmic source and the whole. In this dimension we attain meaning, and this is the sphere of the symbol or archetype - the glyph for the sign itself, , can best be interpreted as pointing to meaning. The psychological function that perceives meaning and of which the language is symbol is intuition, and this is not the conceptual meaning of verbal logic which comes under Mercury, but the instinctive perception of connections and correspondences which comes from the unconscious, and which is the source of meaningful art. Sagittarius comes in the Zodiacal circle opposite to Gemini, and its ruler is Jupiter, or Zeus, meaning communication with the beyond, or the gods (religion) rather than with the immediate environment.
Jung divides the functions into two pairs of opposites: sensation and intuition are both functions of perception, the one of the outer and sense-world and the other inner perception of the unconscious. They are both objective, in as much as they are not concerned with judgement and valuation, but simply with registering what is there. For this reason he calls them the irrational functions. Feeling and thinking, on the other hand, are subjective, and are judgemental, or a reaction to perceptions; they therefore are the rational functions. The opposite poles in each case tend to be mutually exclusive; to be caught up with sensations of the external world tends to exclude looking inside, and vice-versa, while a primary preoccupation with thinking leads one to overlook the feeling side, just as concentrating on feeling can be prejudicial to clear thinking - the contrast between "head" and "heart". One of these functions is uppermost in each individual, and is most differentiated and conscious, and tends to be the first and most natural way of considering the world; this is the superior function, and determines the function type. The function which is the opposite to this is always the inferior function, and operates more from the unconscious (inferior meaning below the surface), is relatively undifferentiated and less under deliberate and conscious control. It tends to manifest compulsively and often negatively, and in a comparatively primitive or infantile maner, but being inferior does not mean that it is missing, or weaker. It is this function that is usually the source of neuroses and the various psychological poblems that afflict us, it is through it that the shadow manifests, and the repressed contents of the personal unconscious. It is this function that we have to integrate and make conscious in order to become whole, or a united being and conscious individual, for we all start out as three-legged horses: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth" (Saying of Maria Prophetissa, quoted by Jung as one of the central axioms of alchemy). Obviously, therefore, it is very important to know which is our inferior function, that we may set about making it more conscious instead of being controlled by it.
Now it is usually stated by those seeking to correlate astrology with Jungian psychology that it is difficult to judge from a horoscope the psychological type, and that it is a question of estimating rather vaguely the preponderance of any particular element. To take one example of guess-work, it is asserted that extraversion-introversion is to be known by taking the count of planets in plus and minus signs (fire/air, versus earth/water), and the function type by a similar count of elements. This amounts to saying that sensation or feeling types are introverts, thinking and intuitive types all extraverts, while Jung never suggested that any function was more introverted or extraverted than any other. When this kind of thinking is applied to individual examples the results always contradict it, but this doesn't discourage the theorists, any more than the thought that sensation, being the sensory perception of the outside world, might more naturally be expected to be extraverted, while intuition, being the perception of the unconscious, is not easily imagined as other than introvert. More often the orientation (introvert/extravert) is ignored, and the elements added up, but it soon becomes apparent that there is even less study or understanding of Jung's typology among astrologers than among his non-astrological protagonists.
Dr. Hamaker-Zondag has made several important advances on previous writers in her book Elements and Crosses, and has not only gone into the question of establishing the type to which a person belongs (though not the orientation), but has gone on from there to work out some of the consequences in the interpretation of each factor in the horoscope. This is something which adds a new dimension to horoscope analysis, and a new source of data for psychological analysis - on condition of course that the type can be established. In this regard she places much greater emphasis on the personal planets and points as indicators of the dominant function (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Ascendant), rather than the outer planets. She also says however: "it has been my experience time and again that the Sun plays a special rôle in any conclusions about the elements." It is proposed here as this writer's experience that the Sun-sign is the sole determining factor as to function type, and hence offers an immedate way of seeing this at a glance, or merely by asking a person's birthday, without any astrological beating about the bush, and without lengthy psychological analysis or long lists of silly questions (which will be answered in any case quite subjectively and usually unrealistically). To prove this in the way one might prove a chemical equation is of course not possible, any more than anything psychological or astrological can be proven in this way. We are not dealing with the properties of matter, and neither of these disciplines is susceptible to linear or Aristotelian logic, and they both function on a completely different set of coordinates. Who could "prove" that there is such thing as a type in the first place? Or prove a symbol? But if people will first of all familiarise themselves thoroughly with Jung's description of the types, and then apply the Sun-sign test to all the individuals whom they know well enough to be able to judge their types, this criterion will be found to work in every case. Anyone who maintains that this is not so, or claims to belong to a type different from that indicated by the Sun, either does not know the types or does not know the character of the signs, and more often than not both of these conditions prevail. A person's type is seldom very clear-cut or simple, and Jung maintained that there are no "pure" types; but it is necessary to observe objectively people's salient characteristics and ways of looking at the world - as opposed to the way a person's own ego sees itself - their interests and way of behaving. It is very much like judging astrological signs at sight, especially those on the Ascendant, by a subtle coordination of characteristic factors and bodily emphases, temperament, and so on, which comes with experience. To judge a person's type by observation it is necessary to know that person rather well, as well as what one is talking about, but once it is accepted and established that the birthday is sufficient evidence, then all types can be known objectively and "scientifically", including those of historical personages. Quite major consequences follow from this.
If the type is not always obvious, it seems nevertheless that everybody has one superior or dominant function, that is more conscious and differentiated, and takes priority in determining the general attitude to the world. Besides this there will often be another quite strongly emphasised, as auxilliary function, or the two constituting the other pair of functions may be relatively developed or underdeveloped. Dr. Hamaker-Zondag's method of counting the strength of each element may be valid to some extent in estimating these auxilliary functions; but on the other hand it is more likely to depend on the overall level of development of the personality, which it is usually stated cannot be judged from a horoscope, and in any case would be conditional upon many other factors as well as a balance of elements. It is likely that the sign in which the Ascendant is found is of primary importance, and the degree of integration of the personality, the opportunities encountered, and the general vitality are all factors which must determine the use made of the auxilliary functions. In any case there must always be an inferior function, and the chief advance made by Dr. Hamaker-Zondag is that, having decided upon the superior function, the rest of the planets are analysed accordingly. Hence planets in signs representing the inferior function, according to the polarities thinking-feeling and sensation-intuition, will be operating from the unconscious, which will greatly alter their significance. For example the greater significance of tension between the dominant element and its opposite - a square between air-earth has less tension than one between air-water. "Planets in the unconscious element (inferior function) will always react from the unconscious part of the psyche". If the Moon is found in the inferior element, this would tend to make the intrusion of unconscious influences in actions and decisions very prominent, while Saturn operating from there would be at its most inhibiting and would probably represent the Shadow.
Similarly, if there are stong afflictions (squares or oppositions, or strong conjunctions - involving Mars, Saturn, Uranus -) in the inferior function, this points surely to a psychological complex, and the house involved shows the area in which it manifests prominently. If the factors anima or animus (see later) are in the inferior function and make difficult aspects to other planets, the nature of the trouble is fairly clear, and it can generally be associated with childhood problems with parents, and a father or mother complex. The other planets in aspect, and their houses, give an overall picture of the ramifications of the complex or neurosis. Since the twelfth house is the area which gives most generally indications of problems coming from the unconscious, this is usually involved in such cases, at least through planetary rulership.
A different question arises when the Ascendant is in the inferior function. The Ascendant can be taken as relating to the outer personality, as well as the physical features; it is the decisive formative factor at the moment of birth, while the Sun sign shows the inner nature of the incarnating being, at its present stage. When these two are in opposite functions there must be some conflict between them, some degree of inner split, and this is usually found to be the case and confirmed by other factors. The Ascendant personality can be expected to manifest, at least in some cases and in some degree, in its inferior aspect, to be compulsive, and associated with psychological complexes shown elsewhere in the chart. Of course we all have complexes, but if our personality is at odds with our inner nature, we can expect difficulties of a certain kind, unless we are evolved enough to integrate the difference.
It is often claimed by astrologers that a person's type can and does change during his lifetime, but this is again theorising and thinking of the progressions of the planets in the horoscope. If they do not know the type in the first place, how can they know that it changes? It is not stated by Jung that a person can change his type. Naturally he develops during his life, matures, ages, gets new knowledge; and he can learn to handle better his problems or integrate to some extent his inferior function. In the ideal case he can become whole, or achieve individuation. But a thinking type cannot turn into a feeling type, or vice-versa, any more than a person born under Aries can turn into one born under Cancer. If this happened as a matter of course, astrology would be utterly senseless and useless, at least as known today. However, there is such a thing as enantiodromia, a tendency for things to change into their opposites under certain conditions, or a reversal of poles. In terms of the functions, the unconscious tends to compensate for an exaggerated bias of the conscious mind by manifesting in an extreme form the inferior function. But this is always compulsive and inferior - that is negative, and designed to undermine the conscious attitude. In terms of the signs of the Zodiac, these form in their circle a different system of opposites, and these too can switch under duress. It is said that every Zodiacal type has built in also, in potential, features of the opposite sign, so that Librans, in the sign of harmony, have some potentially aggressive characteristics of Aries, or a Virgo person, normally analytical, precise, tidy, sober and even finicky, can under great pressure abandon himself to the alcoholism which is one of the characteristics of the negative side of Pisces and the Zodiacal opposite. But this is similar to the surfacing under neurotic conditions of the inferior function in a manifestly inferior form.
There is another possibility in the case of a psychological complex leading a person to assume the pose of belonging to the opposite of his real type. An introvert feeling type, subject, let us say, to a mother complex, might want to assume the disguise or armour of a hard-headed rationalist, to cover up great inner vulnerability: an introvert falsified by imitating the extravert. This has been observed by Jung the other way round with regard to Spitteler's Epimetheus (Ps. Types p.171). Astrologically our case is represented by a close Jupiter/Saturn conjunction in Capricorn, closely square Venus in Aries. Here Venus and Jupiter, value and meaning, are overcome and overshadowed by Saturn, strong in its own earth sign Capricorn; thus the prevailing materialism of the collective status quo, the atheism, "post-modernism" and rationalism of the collective intellectual climate and its self-imposed limits, are adopted deliberately because they seem masculine, macho, and as a neurotic defense reaction. This obscures the issue and may be confusing when there is no objective way of ascertaining the real type, and underlines the need for one; but with sufficient knowledge of the person concerned, it becomes easy to understand, and in any case the assumed function is always essentially inferior - even though it might seem clever in patches. In another case a person might flatter him/herself by supposing himself a thinking type. A thinking type is interested primarily in ideas, but if a would-be thinking type takes up ideas, say Jungian ones, but more as a vehicle for self-advancement than for the sake of promoting the ideas themselves, it is likely that he/she belongs to some other type, for instance Capricorn as a career type - Saturn's sign, and an earth sign, hence a sensation type. He/she could still have a strong thinking function, which is far from excluded and in fact often goes with Capricorn. In the same way someone who is actually a thinking type (air sign) might feel much at the mercy of compulsive feelings, but these would be a manifestation of his inferior function and would be inferior in character, perhaps sentimentality, anima-obsession, and so on, and connected with a complex. Whereas in a real feeling type, feeling is the most conscious and differentiated function and is not obsessive. Feeling is not lacking in a thinking type, but functions differently: whereas someone who does lack feeling and is of a hard and egotistical nature might mistakenly suppose that for this reason he/she must be a thinking type. But the real typology will be very apparent to informed observers, taking into consideration the way the person behaves as a whole. Thus this supposed thinking type might be seen to be exceptionally observant, missing nothing that is going on in the immediate vicinity; this points again to a sensation or earth type, and the hardness would again be appropriate to Capricorn. The prototype of a sensation type, particularly an extraverted one, must surely be Sherlock Holmes.
Another source of confusion to astrologers is the question of planets above and below the horizon, which is often taken for an indication of extraversion/introversion. It is true that very obviously extraverted people often have a great majority of planets above the horizon, that is, in the public sector, and the converse is sometimes true, but not as often. This coincidence however is by no means the rule. The houses below the horizon represent the phase of personal development, those above, one's interaction with others and with the social environment; that is, in their most mundane context, even though half of them, the 8th, 12th (the two water houses) and the ninth of intuition, have also deeper and very different and introverted meanings. An extravert who is entirely tuned in to a social function or dealing with the public would have all or most planets above the horizon - usually mostly in the seventh and eight houses. But not all extraverts have to be disc-jockeys, soap-box orators or dictators. An extravert is tuned into "die Welt der Dinge" - the outside world of persons and things, some of which can just as well belong below the horizon - for instance, money in the second house, gambling, speculating or sport in the fifth, work or small animals in the sixth. The criteria for extraversion and introversion are generally taken as an outgoing, social disposition as against an introspective, withdawn or private one; in this respect, astrologically, something like Venus in the twelfth house is far more telling than planets below the horizon. But there is very much more to it than that, and in fact it is very hard to find anyone, either in person or in print, except Rudhyar, who seems to have studied and understood Jung's discussion of this subject, to which three quarters of his book Psychological Types is devoted. It is a polarity involving the whole attitude and philosophy of life or way of looking at the world, and it shows up in everything and is far from being only an aptitude for socialising.
Having determined the function type from the Sun sign, a glance at Mercury shows the orientation. Marc Jones originally differentiated between Mercury as morning star, ahead of the Sun, and as evening star, rising or setting after the Sun, as characterising the "eager" and "deliberate" types, respectively. Mercury ahead of the Sun shows judgement ahead of the event, while Mercury after the Sun judges after the event. This has been elaborated by Rudhyar, in An Astrological Study of Psychological Complexes, into Promethean and Epimethean Mercury, which he further subdivides according to whether Mercury is direct or retrograde, waxing or waning in respect to its cycle round the Sun: "The Promethean character of Mercury begins at inferior conjunction, when Mercury is retrograde, and between the earth and the Sun; its Epimethean character is revealed at superior conjunction when Mercury is direct on the other side of the Sun". The former is the waxing half of the cycle, the latter the waning half.
"...Mercury-Prometheus bids man to be a thinker and an individual through use of the solar fire wrested from heaven ... The Promethean phase of the mind is one in which Mercury's motion is constantly accelerating - thus its 'eager' character and its 'running ahead of itself'. The Epimethean phase is one of deceleration, of constant slowing down, of putting on brakes on mental exuberance. The Epimethean-Direct mind is a 'full' mind, by which I mean a mind which seeks to reflect objectively as much as it can of the meaning of life and events after these have occurred. It is the historical, objective mind, which reasons things out on the basis of precedents. It is often the most 'successful' practically speaking - not running ahead of itself, or life, but running things and people. 9 "
This distinction is very illuminating, but so far it does not appear to have been taken up. The difference between the Promethean and Epimethean characters described by Rudhyar is quite in accordance with that discussed by Jung in Psychological Types. In the course of this work he looks at many previous descriptions of the two types, including Spitteler's poem on Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus - the prototypes in myth of the introvert (looking ahead) and extravert (looking out at what already exists) orientation; orientation towards the future or the creative, as opposed to the status quo and static, the individual as opposed to the collective. The terms "introvert" (Promethean) and "extravert (Epimethean) are Jung's psychological summing up of this fundamental polarity. Thus the question has nothing to do with "positive" and "negative" signs, nor with positive or negative characteristics; but it has a great deal to do, as a general rule, with the pioneering, original and creative type of mind, deriving illumination from the unconscious or from inner realities (Promethean), compared with an objective orientation towards the outside world, society and the status quo (Epimethean). Extraverts tend of course to be much more adjusted to society, to be more "normal", while introverts tend to be individualists, often eccentrics. As Jung pointed out, we live in a predominantly extravert society and age, the latter part of the Piscean, orientated overwhelmingly towards extravert and material values, and introverts have a hard time in being true to their nature. Extraversion means extension, or space, while introversion refers to depth, or time, and these are the two poles of consciousness. Individually also Pisceans are more often than not extraverts. Here it is not a question of element but much more one of mode 3, and mutable signs, most of all Gemini, do tend to be extravert. Scorpio, the fixed water sign, associated with depths, is hard to think of as extraverted, though sometimes it must be. Libra, the cardinal air sign, on the autumnal equinox, is likely to be introverted thinking; here we are speaking of the intrinsic character of the signs and their compatibility with either introversion or extraversion, though of course they can be either.
Taking into consideration the fact that in astrology there are many other factors that could obscure or complicate the basic issue, we can understand that there are sometimes cases which are very confusing. An example is a young man with nearly all the planets below the horizon, born at midnight, with Moon in Capricorn, and Pluto rising close to the Ascendant, square the Sun. He is very withdrawn in himself, tense, and could be described as bottled up, anxious, and has every appearance of being as introverted as one could very well imagine. But Mercury rises after the Sun by two degrees and thirty six minutes. It is direct, and has just passed the superior conjunction. Therefore it has just entered its "Epimethean" phase, and if we consider the subject's actual way of looking at things - as distinct from his demeanour - we find that it is characteristically Epimethean or extravert. Thus an attachment to established values, in this case not "traditional" values in the usual sense, but those of the prevailing extravert scientific establishment, or "Science", which is the collective religion of the last few centuries, and to the collective "culture" and attitude of his generation. In details always a preference for the foreground, the immediate, and a lack of interest in distances, or the overall view, while a taste for photography (an extravert medium) is centered on obtaining close-up pictures of for example the façade of the gable end of an old stone ruin (a very Saturnian theme), or close architectural details of stone sculpturings etc. on buildings. Otherwise the outward demeanour and withheld nature of this subject is related to Pluto rising, square the Sun, and a rather severe psychological father complex; while Moon in Capricorn is a further oppressive factor emotionally.
Otherwise in applying the criteria of Sun-sign and Mercury the results correspond to a remarkable degree with Jung's description of each type, and are also in every case confirmed by the rest of the horoscope. Great seers, for example, spiritual teachers or leaders, and sometimes great artists in the same category, tend to be introvert intuitive types, as we would expect; one may cite Bach, Beethoven, Jung himself, and Rudhyar; also Napoleon, as a war leader, and T.E. Lawrence. Persons with developed occult or visionary powers tend to belong to this type, as did Blake.
"Introverted intuition is directed to the inner object, a term that might justly be applied to the contents of the unconscious... of the collective unconscious in particular..." 4 It "apprehends the images arising from the a priori inherited foundations of the unconscious"; 5 and "its prophetic foresight is explained by its relation to the archetypes".6
The negative manifestation of this type is the crank and the dreamer. We read that Jung considered himself an introvert intuitive, and he should know to which of his own types he himself belonged. A study of his chart and also of his autobiography, where he refers to the "strange inner world" with which he has to contend, makes this the only possible type to which he could belong.
The extravert intuitive, on the other hand, is typically the person with a flair for business, the tycoon, entrepreneur, and though orientated to external situations, is "always sniffing out new possibilities". He can combine intuition with his objective and external perceptions.
It is not always easy to understand the functions, and the types, and in some respects we are only beginning to do so. It is difficult moreover to understand a type different from one's own. It is particularly difficult to get a clear conception of intuition, and it is commonly confused with feeling; thus Noel Tyl wants to equate it with water, and fire with feeling. 7 Intuition is really the apprehension of meaning, or of correspondences; or of symbolic relationships, or "space-time relationships" (Jung). It is "apprehension by means of the archetype".8 A vague "hunch", wishful thinking, or simply unconscious compulsions which may arise from complexes and be entirely negative, are often spoken of as "intuition". Rudhyar says of Venus Lucifer (rising ahead of the Sun):
"There is a basic personal sense of insecurity, and feelings are primarily depended upon to serve as guides and signposts. In later life, these feelings may be given the more mature and respectable name of intuition; yet essentially the nature of the process remains the same. The individual 'feels' situations and persons in an act of almost immediate ethical judgement. They are good or bad - for him and at that particular time."9
Water signs, particularly Cancer and Pisces, are often described as "intuitive", and Pisces is in fact often psychic. This is because the unconscious is archetypally symbolised by water, and the psychic is in touch with the unconscious. Feeling itself comes from the unconscious, but is a faculty applied to the outside world rather than a perception of the unconscious itself, especially the collective unconscious, the realm of the archetypes. Psychism is thus not the same as intuition, but extra-sensory perception of external phenomena, rather than the perception of inner and archetypal contents, though the word may be loosely used in both senses. It may apply to the projection of unconscious contents into the outside world. Psychism may relate to what is referred to as the lower astral plane, to spiritualist phenomena, perceiving subtle influence, or spirits, but always as though outside the individual.
The Moon and Neptune rule water, and feeling; Neptune is associated with mysticism, which is a feeling state. Thus many "intuitions" may be feeling, or value judgements, for feeling and thinking are the "rational" functions and involve judgement and reasoning. With the "irrational" functions (sensation and intuition) on the other hand, "their perception is directed simply and solely to events as they happen, no selection being made by judgement", and "they are in the highest degree empirical ...They base themselves exclusively on experience - so exclusively that, as a rule their judgement cannot keep pace with their experience."10 The word feeling in English is generally not well understood, as not only is it often mistaken for intuition - a word still less understood - but it does embody in itself the double meaning of feeling proper and sensation. The Germans have two words, fühlen and empfinden , while feeling means both and can refer to the sensation of touch, or we speak of "getting the feel of" something, or say "I feel well", meaning I have harmonious bodily sensations. Feeling, says Jung, is a process that "imparts to the content a definite value in the sense of acceptance or rejection." It is "an entirely subjective process, which may be in every respect independent of external stimuli, though it allies itself with every sensation." It is not the sensation itself, but the process of valuation. Further: "Valuation by feeling extends to every content of consciousness, of whatever kind it may be." 11 In astrology, though the element water represents the feeling function generally, valuation is associated with the planet Venus, which rules the earth sign Taurus and the air sign Libra. In Taurus it is associated with pleasurable physical sensations of all kinds, including visual - ornaments etc. - and musical sound as sensation. In Libra, an air sign, it is aesthetical and mental rather than physical, and it is here that Venus is associated with art. Since Libra is also the sign of close relationships, and Venus is the planet (goddess) of love, these two realms of Venus make up all the positive aspects of valuation and feeling. In a negative sense feeling is also associated with Mars - in the sense of anger, sarcasm, hostility, and we have in these two planets a pair of principles of attraction (Venus, magnetism) and repulsion (Mars). Mars rules the first sign, Aries (myself, and opposite of Libra - the other) and the water sign Scorpio, opposite of Taurus, (the most intense and active sensation- and other-orientated feeling, or passion, which is sex), so that together these two planets cover all the elements, and represent positive and negative valuation.
It can be seen therefore that astrology brings to these concepts a higher degree of differentiation, and a greater complexity. There is a semantic confusion moreover between emotion and feeling, which is not easy to sort out, and in ordinary language the terms are interchangeable. If feeling is only to do with valuation, evidently it does not mean water. In this area Jung himself may have run into a patch of fog, and astrology may help to clear it up. "When the intensity of feeling increases", he says, "it turns into an affect - i.e. a feeling-state accompanied by marked physical innervations".11 He says "I use emotion as synonymous with affect". 12 Emotion is defined in my dictionary as "agitation of the mind", and clearly is to do with movement (motion), while Jung's "feeling", so long as not intense, is static. He defines libido as psychic energy 13; thus, it looks as though 'feeling' (valuation) plus libido produces emotion. Now in astrology libido is represented by the Moon and water, so that Venus and Mars are more like the principles that regulate or differentiate feeling, rather than the feeling itself, which we think of more as emotion, involving libido. This emotion is then applied according to Venus and Mars. Another clue is given by the relation of the Moon to the Venus sign Taurus, in which it is said to be "exalted" - that is, it has a special and higher relationship to it even than to its home sign Cancer. This strongly confirms Jung's statement that "feeling" (for which now read valuation plus libido) allies itself with every sensation.
Venus, besides being direct, concrete sensation as such, represents harmony, rhythm, or the balancing of the parts in a whole (the second sign of Venus is Libra, the balance). The balance is disturbed by force from without, or desire (Mars) from within. To Mars we attribute selection, drive, or the selective application of energy, aim, direction. The principle of Mars is essentially a going out (it is the first planet outside the orbit of the earth), and muscular action in response to the outside world. These three factors, Moon, Venus and Mars, are evidently closely associated and related to feeling, and we can see them as parts of a process; to the Moon may be attributed psychic energy, or the emotive power (affect), as reflected from the Sun, the actual life force. The Moon goddess is the feminine pneuma, "the brightness of everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God".15 Venus then, as valuation, is the orientation of this energy according to sensations (Taurus) or cosmic harmony (Libra). The ideal is harmony; valuations measure the perceptions as concord or discord, affecting the flux of psychic energy. Mars is the resultant action, or the application of the energy as selected response. Thus:
s d Libido (psychic energy)
f Transmission of libido via nerves or meridians
Emotion
g orientation of libido via sensation c
or Aesthetic sense X
Action
h application of libido
j sublimation of libodo, to higher expression
Rudhyar defines emotions as "waves of outflowing energy, and feelings as "reactions of the organism as a whole to a life situation". In this latter sense, 'feeling' represents the individual, versus the outside world. Although one usually associates aesthetical experiences or expression with feeling, these partake of all the functions, as symbolism, relating the individual (feeling), via the object (sensation) to the universal (thinking), and the perception of this relationship is intuition (inspiration). Or we can say that feeling (the personal unconscious) is projected onto, or translated through, the symbol, or microcosm, leading through the conscious mind (air) to a perception of the macrocosm, and thence to meaning, the collective unconscious, or spirit (fire). Fire is the combining of the other three dimensions into creativity. Any one of the three phases, dimensions or terms of the relationship may be emphasised in a particular artist or work, or all of them in proportion, as in classical art. The medium of art itself is a rhythmic, hence sympathetic sensation, and this is of the most direct and strongest kind in the sound sensation of music. Added to which is the practical skill required to play musical instruments, and so it is not surprising that we often find a strong earth ingredient, especially Taurus, in the charts of musicians. Beethoven even has zero points in water signs, being mostly earth and fire, with a retrograde and unaspected Venus. The Sun is in Sagittarius, the Ascendant Taurus.16 Music however, besides being the most strongly sensation-orientated of the arts, also lends itself to emotional expression better than any other medium, hence its traditional association with Neptune. Neptune, the ocean, is feeling or emotion in vast extension, no longer confined to the concrete or personal (Venus), but embracing the transcendent and the collective unconscious. In Beethoven's music there is no personal emotion, and Neptune is in the fifth house of creativity.
Air represents the factor of intellecual organisation in the aesthetic process, and in association with Mercury, the Mercurial medium of words, which is no doubt why poets tend to have many air planets, reflecting their preoccupation with words and concepts. Two of the most outstanding for their power and poetry of language, Rimbaud and W.B. Yeats, have Sun, Moon and Ascendant all in air signs, the former in Libra and the latter in Gemini and Aquarius, with Mercury and two other planets also in air signs. Fire signs too are common in poets, especially Aries and Leo; fire being intuition, it is the faculty of perception of symbolism and meaning, that is to say of correspondences. Thus Sun in Leo is common to Shelley, Dryden, Tennyson, Hopkins, Robert Graves, while Baudelaire, Swinburne, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Robert Frost have Sun in Aries. It will be noticed that among the latter three belong to the group of 'symbolist' poets. It is often evident from what one knows of the character and works of well known personalities whether they are extravert or introvert, if one is clear about the difference; thus W.B.Yeats could under no circumstances be thought of as an extravert, while it is equally clear that Stravinsky, for example, could not possibly be an introvert. The horoscope always confirms these cases. Executant musicians, whose whole career is performing in public, must, to feel thoroughly at home in this rôle, be extraverted, and reference to their horoscopes will nearly always confirm this. If there are exceptions, in this or other cases, it tells us a lot about that particular person and his relationship to the rôle. When one knows the individual well enough personally, there can be little doubt on this question, and the Mercury test always corresponds.
Painters appear to be most characteristically extravert, since they are preoccupied more than any other kind of artist directly with the outside world; and they are also often water types, which may point to the traditional association of Neptune also with painting and colour. The very material of painting can be said to be liquid, being the application of pigment in water or oil (another Neptune association) to paper or canvas. Neptune, as the higher octave of Venus, and as mysticism etc., is the symbol of the higher feeling world, or higher level of the feeling function. The planets outside the orbit of Saturn are linked to the beyond, to the cosmic powers, or, in psychological language, to the collective unconscious; they are transpersonal in their symbolism, and represent stages of the transcendent function. Uranus, ruling the air sign Aquarius, symbolises higher thinking. The next sign in order of the Zodiac is Pisces, ruled by Neptune, and this planet is especially associated with creative art, in its aspect of relating, through the feeling function, to a different dimension of reality; while the aesthetic function of Venus stays within the context of this material world. Neptune represents the astral world, in the language of occult science, and the astral or feeling 'body' in the aura. This is the world of colour, and of the soul - again in occult language, the word soul referring to the feeling body, as distinct from the higher thinking body and ultimately the spirit. Again, colour is associated with emotions, which show in colours in the aura to clairvoyant perception. Colour is "The most fluctuating and impermanent of all phenomena our senses perceive", like feelings and water, colour being "an active interplay of light and darkness". Colour can be the entrance to another reality, and we can speak of the "soul-world of colour". "Feelings have to be raised above the personal to the level of the super-personal, to objective general truths".17 Colours have their very particular meanings, and this higher Neptunian feeling world (which might be called devotional - also an aspect of the sign Pisces) is especially associated with blue. It is realized in painting above all in the late water-garden paintings of Claude Monet, who in these works sees through the surface of the physical world and via colour brings us into another dimension:
"Monet finally addressed the element that in itself is the most docile, the most penetrable, namely water, which is simultaneously transparency, irridescence and a mirror. Thanks to water, he became the indirect painter of what the eye does not see." (Paul Claudel). 18
The higher feeling world of Neptune is attained in music especially in the slow movement of Beethoven's A-minor string quartet, op.132 - a world very comparable with that of Monet's water gardens. The whole of this quartet is strongly Neptunian in symbolism and associated with water and the unconscious. 19
The relation of the art of painting to the element water is strikingly shown if we refer to the horoscopes of famous painters. The following have at least one of the three most important points, the Sun, Moon and Ascendant, in water signs; and since the degree of the Ascendant depends upon the time of birth, and this is seldom known, the count may very well be much higher if all the Ascendants were known. The sign Cancer occurs most frequently, and often one of the other water signs (Scorpio, and Pisces) contains a second point.
Painters with Ascendant in Cancer:
Van Dyck, van Gogh, Goya (and Moon), Blake (and Moon), Monet (and Moon),20 Dufy, Dal’.
Painters with Sun in Cancer:
Rembrandt, Rubens, Corot, Boudin, Degas, Pisarrro, Modigliani, Whistler, Chagall.
Painters with Sun in Pisces:
Michelangelo (and Moon), Renoir, Kokoschka, Daumier;
With Moon only in Pisces:
Leonardo, CÉzanne.
Sun in Scorpio:
Hogarth, Sisley, Picasso;
Ascendant Scorpio:
Raphael (and Moon), Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Klee, Pierre Bonnard,
Chagall.
The close connection between the style of the painter and the predominating sign is particularly striking, for example, in Renoir, who has three planets in Pisces, and whose whole style, with its full rounded forms, tending to be without distinct outlines, is characteristic of this sign.
It may be more difficult to understand how a theoretical physicist and mathematician like Einstein should be an extraverted feeling type, with Sun in Pisces, since one might assume that mathematics, as pure abstraction, must be to do with thinking, and therefore air. Einstein has a preponderance of earth and fire, and only the Sun and Ascendant in water, only Jupiter in air. This is a very instructive example in many ways. Einstein "often commented upon his poor memory. He did much of his work through intuition and images. Not long after the outline for his special Theory of Relativity was published in 1905, it was said that Einstein owed its accomplishment at least partly to the fact that he knew little about the mathematics of space and time."21 In any case, mathematics is not Mercurial thinking, which is to do with words and concepts, and is probably more connected with fire and intuition. Thinking types in fact tend to find mathematics antipathetic and to be more or less inept in that discipline - at least this is often the case. As a personality Einstein seems to have been perfectly true to type, as a very kind, sympathetic and religious man. As author of Relativity Theory, he could not have been a rationalist, and true innovations and great insights are never produced by rational thinking. To study the nature of reality "to some extent includes identification with, rather than separation from, that which is being studied", and the result in the first place comes from within (intuition). Einstein "came closest perhaps in this regard, for he was able quite naturally to identify himself with various 'functions' of the universe. He was able to listen to the inner voice of matter. He was intuitively and emotionally led to his discoveries. He leaned against time, and felt it give and wobble". 22 This is fully confirmed by astrology, and the ability to feel into and empathise is especially characteristic of Pisces.
Pisces and Neptune, as we have already seen, symbolise the ocean - extension and infinite space (the opposite of Saturn, boundaries and material logic), and this excellently becomes a theorist of space and relationships (relativity), as one of its higher level manifestations. (On a lower level it can appear as lack of discrimination or of individuality, and lower still as alcoholism.) Space too is an aspect of extraversion, and space exploration is a feature of the second half of the Piscean Age. Intuition of course is concerned with time (the 4th dimension), but "space-time" is an extravert conception of time, and a consequence of Sun in Pisces (an equating of time with space). Neptune is connected with visualisation and images (see the quotation above), and above all is the planet of mysticism - and Pisces the sign of devotional yoga (Bhakti yoga) and the sign of Christianity. Einstein himself wrote :
"The deepest and most beautiful emotion which we can feel is the experience of the mystical. This is the inseminator (sower) of all true science. He to whom this emotion is foreign, who no longer wonders, no longer can stand in confused awe, is as good as dead". 23
It has been pointed out 24 that Relativity Theory was born during the Uranus-Neptune opposition. Both planets are collective or cosmic symbols; Uranus, higher (intuitive) thinking, and also very generally science; Neptune, space, higher feeling, and ruling Pisces. Jupiter is the principle of assimilation and integration into the greater whole, or relating to the larger, ultimately cosmic environment, or the divine; hence higher philosophy, religion. It rules Sagittarius, a fire sign, and also rules Pisces, with Neptune. In Einstein's horoscope of birth, Jupiter is in Aquarius (the sign of Uranus), and in direct aspect to Uranus (opposition), which together points to intuitive thinking.
Relativity Theory was a decisive turning point in scientific thinking marking the approaching end of the Piscean Age, and the planet Uranus is the key factor in this process. Uranus in Einstein's horoscope is in an isolated position, making it a focal point. A previous turning point marking the beginning of modern (Piscean) astronomy and, as it were, the other pole of this process, was the work of Galileo, who was born in 1564. The similarities and parallels between the horoscopes of Galileo and Einstein are quite remarkable. Again the Sun is in Pisces, together with Mercury and Venus; the psychological type is extravert feeling. The pattern of the chart is broadly the same, with Uranus as a singleton, isolated from the other planets, and this time in Sagittarius (Jupiter's sign). Here it is opposite Neptune, in the natal chart; and Neptune is in Gemini, constituting the only body in an air sign, and making a close parallel to Einstein's Jupiter in Aquarius.
It is particularly interesting and instructive to consider that this same type of extraverted Piscean includes Rudolph Steiner. The fact that like Einstein he embodies in type exactly the age in which we live may be an important aspect of his message, exemplifying some of the highest qualities and potentials of Pisces, in its spiritual and esoteric aspect, rather than as space (Neptune) confronted by science (Uranus). Here Neptune is the dominating influence, in its context of the astral world. His horoscope is quite remarkable, and corresponds to what he tells us in his autobiography ("Mein Lebensgang"). It is very Neptunian, with a close (1¡) conjunction of Mercury and Neptune in Pisces (seeing into the psychic world, or communicating with it), in the fifth house, of self-expression and creativity. Neptune is the "final dispositor" of the chart, meaning the dominating factor, from which the rest of the horoscope (or karma) depends or derives. His whole teaching was orientated towards the perception of the spirit world: "The goal of the process of knowledge (Mercury) is the conscious experience of the spiritual world". This must be attained through the sense-world (extraversion): "For me the accuracy and penetration of the powers of sense-observation meant that I was enabled to enter upon an entirely new world"; (a process that is demonstrated in painting by Monet). Before that happened, in his thirty-sixth year (Mars conjunct Pluto in Taurus, exactly, and close to the Descendant), "perceptual grasp upon the sense-world had caused me the greatest difficulty" (Mercury conjunct Neptune in Pisces). Mars and Pluto are both power planets and their close conjunction marks an extremely penetrating focus of power. The fact that it is in Taurus, the sign of the most immediate sensations, is very significant in view of what Steiner is saying - and he was not talking about astrology. "I soon learned that such observation of the world leads truly into the world of the spirit" - just as in the case of Monet, and Turner too in his later works. In Steiner's horoscope there is a 40¡ aspect between these two close conjunctions. This aspect, the Nonagon, or ninth part of the circle, seems strongly in evidence in cases of clairvoyance in any form. Sackoian and Acker 25 give it occult significance and relate it to inter-dimensional transformations. Steiner has another between Moon and Saturn, and the fixed star Acrux, of the Southern Cross, conjunct his Ascendant, and this star has similar significance and regularly occurs in this context.
Steiner also emphasised the necessity for such observation to be accompanied by clear and definite ideas (the Mercury component of the conjunction):
"When in addition to sense-perception, ideas are also experienced, the sense-world in its objective essential being is embraced within consciousness"... and..."If a person enters into the interior of his own soul without taking ideas with him, he arrives at the inner region of mere feeling". 26
There is a T-Square in his horoscope between the Sun (in Pisces) and Uranus in Gemini (on the 8th house cusp), and Saturn in Virgo. This T-Square is a configuration of tension or discord, a state that would prevail between a very Neptunian and feeling-orientated Mercury, and Uranus in Gemini, Mercury's own sign, and Saturn in Virgo, Mercury's other sign, representing practical and material logic and discrimination, the opposite principle to Neptune, while Virgo is zodiacally opposite to Pisces. Consequently the resultant thinking and conceptual logic tends to be lacking in clarity, and this conflict is not always resolved. Nevertheless the message is very important for today, that clear thinking, rather than just thinking, is required to go with insight, when there is so much unclear and nebulous (Neptunian) thinking prevalent - the desire to dissolve in the ocean without having learned the lessons of Saturn, and having become a conscious and fully defined individual. (Steiner's Mercury-Neptune conjunction has no major aspect to other planets and therefore tends to function on its own, without tying in with the other functions or the world as a whole, and so with a certain unconnectedness or one-trackedness prejudicial to logic and clear thinking.)
To compare Steiner with Jung is a most interesting study in typology, and in the contrast between psychic (Pisces) and intuitive (Leo), extravert and introvert, on the spiritual or philosophic level. Jung, the introvert intuitive (intuition is perception of the unconscious, introversion is looking within), interpreted all spiritual perceptions or phenomena psychologically, in terms of the unconscious, and as inner realities. Steiner, the extravert Piscean, interpreted them, like spiritual teachers generally, as perceptions of a spirit world existing outside and independently of the subject. What for the one are psychological complexes, repressed experiences and contents, or parts of the personality that the conscious mind wants to forget or disown, are thought of by the other as "elementals", psychic entities and spirits, or influences of evil spirits or the devil - negative causes or influences playing upon or vying for possession of the individual from outside, ultimately under the dominions of Lucifer and Ahriman, spirits or angels intent upon preventing the spiritual of evolution of humanity. All these forces are flying around in a spirit world somewhere outside the subject, much like bacterial spores in the air. Even if "elementals" arise from negative thoughts or feelings of the subject himself, they exist as outside entities; whereas psychological contents or components of the psyche can, under negative conditions, become split off from the personality as a whole and act autonomously. Whichever way you look at it, the result is much the same, but the treatment would be radically different, being in the one case analysis with a view to making the process conscious, and in the other some form of exorcism or magic - which perhaps could also work as hypnosis - but remaining unconscious.
In the same way the deeper unconscious, the collective unconscious in Jung's view, the source of the archetypes, is an inherited substratum or structure of the mind, and is the source of the Self, the supra personal essence and higher faculties of the individual (soul in official theological parlance), as distinct from the conscious ego, the outer and provisional part. From the extravert or spiritist (both views can be equally spiritual ) point of view, the higher sources of knowledge or inspiration revealed to the individual, his intuition or spiritual certainties, derive from outside sources in the form of protective spirits, spiritual guides, angels, archangels, or theosophical Masters, right up, in the simplest view, to God himself, as either a personified or generalised concept. It really amounts to whether you think in terms of the God outside or the God within. It may make little difference in the end, provided that we can contact this source, but the means will be different, the difference being between the more individual and conscious approach - the psychological and introverted one - and a more unconscious and dependent (collective) one, that of the extravert. The latter is devotional, Piscean, and to do with Neptune, while the former is more in keeping with the present stage of coming into Aquarius, ruled by Saturn and Uranus, when we have to become more spiritual, certainly, but at the same time more conscious, and more individuated (but less ego-motivated).
An alternative to the Jungian collective unconscious is the idea of a much larger psyche than that comprised in any one life, which manifests in many incarnations through time, and thereby goes through an evolution of consciousness, and brings with it memories, archetypes etc. from other incarnations. Reincarnation is an integral part of the Steinerian world, and that of all real spiritual teachers, seers, and virtually all religions, even if not of ecclesiastical theologians, and it is just as compatible with an introvert and psychological view - merely an extension of it. Without reincarnation it is difficult to explain good and evil, or to make sense of life at all. Astrology predicates it, and makes no sense otherwise. Jung struggles with this problem in "Answer to Job". Professionally he had to avoid this kind of issue in the interests of having his message accepted at all in established areas of thinking; and he had to avoid extending the idea of elements and functions into the occult teaching of the four bodies or levels of man - material-etheric, astral, mental and spiritual - the exact designations vary, but in any case are perceptible to clairvoyants in the aura. Jung stopped short at "the crack between the worlds". Hence his problem with the Job syndrome, which really hinges upon the Saturn archetype, and is thus clarified by astrology; the Old Testament Jehovah is a form of Saturn, as is also the principle of taking responsibility for one's own life and karma. Steiner comes in at this point, with an entirely different and occult concept of evolution, consistent with the idea of the Anthropos (also dear to Jung in the context of alchemy), and with a theosophical cosmogony that is exceedingly interesting and probably more rewarding than any other. (Combining these two words Steiner called his philosophy Anthroposophy).
In this kind of area the two approaches will be able to meet in the future, but up to then they tend to be mutually exclusive. If the whole "spirit world" is explained as projections from within the psyche, a mere mirror-effect, arising from various physical and mental distortions, this is very subversive to much of the teaching of spiritual gurus; while if their hold on their followers may be seen as due to a psychological complex, and the lack of ability on the part of the latter to take responsibility for themselves, and think for themselves (weak Saturn), this could be fatal. This explains why very many such teachers are hostile to psychology, sometimes neurotically so, and they invariably ignore it; while astrology is liable to come in for the same opprobrium, having suspicious affinities with a similar viewpoint. It also explains why we never find any reference to Jung in Steiner literature, while Jung often goes out of his way to take a side-kick at "theosophy and anthroposophy", even when this seems rather irrelevant and looks like a complusive grudge. He is as antipathetic to "Indian metaphysics" as to materialism. This is very interesting in view of Jung's strongly Saturnine nature (Capricorn Ascendant, Saturn in the first house in Aquarius). Indian metaphysics are undoubtedly Neptunian in character and the very opposite to Saturn, whereas Chinese philosophy, much appreciated by Jung, is very different and down to earth. Jung has furthermore a close square between his Sun and Neptune (which is stationary retrograde), and this can certainly be taken as a non-attunement to the Neptune principle. A significant commentary on his chart is given by Rudhyar in Astrology and the Modern Psyche.
With Jung's strong Saturn and Aquarius component, combined with introverted intuition, he was a very clear and logical thinker, and his thinking was empirical, well earthed or grounded in experience (Saturn), but also in accordance with a perception of reality (intuition) - that is, the whole being. In this it has nothing in common with rationalism which employs the thinking function alone, more or less independent of the other three. Jung's Ascendant is usually given as early Aquarius, but Rudhyar's version, on good evidence, is late Capricorn, and Jung's features (empirical evidence for an astrologer) suggest that this is correct. His Saturn however is in the air sign Aquarius which occupies his first house, and his psychological approach is scientific in the best and all round sense. Steiner on the other hand approaches from the pole of feeling and psychism, and from a clairvoyant perception of other dimensions, or an ability to see into other dimensions or levels of reality directly - or into other worlds. This is the extravert pole of spirituality, while Jung's introvert one is no less spiritual and is concerned with the same things. Although they were contemporary and active within a short distance of one another in Switzerland, they seem to have had no contact whatsoever, nor to have recognised one another's existence. They meet however in the middle and the conclusions to which they come and the messages they have for present and Western humanity are remarkably similar.
This offers us an exceptionally instructive example of the practical effects of difference of type and of typology working out in action. It is obvious that both poles and approaches are needed, just as we all need both Saturn and Neptune in our horoscopes, and astrology could be regarded as the common ground and the reconciling discipline, including both. Sometimes, and for certain purposes, the one approach is needed, and at other times the other is more useful. To deal with an unconscious psychological complex the Jungian analytical approach is the most effective and practical, and no amount of guru-devotion or self-effacement before a deity will make it go away. On the other hand there are other dimensions of reality outside time and space, and some people can be sensible to them. The spirit world, and the world of nature-spirits, are no less valid and useful concepts. Jung' s ideas of synchronicity are not far from recognising this.
No formulations of knowledge, or theories, are more than an expression of ourselves at a certain stage of development, or a statement of "where we are at" at this moment, and all knowledge is subjective in this sense, and this is its raison d'tre. It is an interpretation of our experiences in our particular language of the moment, and according to our type, or our psychological, even physiological orientation, astrological pattern and particular point of view, and is a kind of dream. In differentiating the functions we are analysing wholeness, and any such analysis is only an abstract frame of reference and must be understood as non-Aristotelian. In reality all the functions interpenetrate all the time and are continuous and interdependent, like the phases of symbolism, the four-fold bodies of esoteric teaching, or the physical body and the morphogenetic field. 27 Their relative or temporary emphasis is a matter of degree. All the other astrological factors affect the outcome, and the individual either develops or regresses. But it is important as far as possible to organise our terms in the right relationship and make our frame of reference functional.
HOROSCOPE DETAILS
Galileo, taken from E.T. Mann in "The Round Art". The Ascendant is presumably obtained by Mann's dowsing technique, but it does not affect the points raised here. Pisa, February 15th 1564.
Einstein's Ascendant is in general agreement, being derived from the time on his birth certificate. March 14th 1879.
Steiner's birth time is given as 11.15 p.m. February 27th 1861, by Alan Leo in "The Art of Synthesis", at Kraljevic, Austria.
Jung's chart is taken from Rudhyar, "Astrology and the Modern Psyche", as based on the birth data furnished by Jung himself to Mrs Fleisher (p.48). 7.20 p.m. local time, July 26th 1875, at Kesswill, Switzerland.
REFERENCES - Chapter One
1. Thorwald Dethlefsen: The Challenge of Fate.
2. Marie-Louise von Franz: Jung: His Myth in Our time, P.136.
Also: "Mercurius, the god in matter, was for the alchemists not only quicksilver, but a philosophical substance, a water 'that does not wet the hands', a 'dry water or a divine water'. As such it was taken to be the basic substance of the universe."
3. Modes: The signs of the Zodiac, and each quadrant of the circle, are divided into three modes, Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable. See chapter six for futher explanation.
4. Jung; , Psychological Types, par. 655.
5. Ibid par. 659.
6. Ibid par. 660.
7. Noel Tyl, Astrology and Personality , Vol.IV of The Principles and Practice of Astrology (Llewellyn Publications) p.48.
8. Jung; "Instinct and the Unconscious", par. 277 (Vol.8 of C.W.)
9. Rudhyar: An Astrological Study of Psychological Complexes p.105.
10. Jung: Psych.Types par. 616.
11. Ibid par. 724, 725.
12. Ibid par 681.
13. Ibid par. 78.
14. Thomas Ring: Astrologische Menschenkunde,, Vol.I p.67. In the table on p.78, Moon is given as "rhythmical life-animation", and Venus as "passive coordination", Mars "active expression". This work, in four volumes, has not been translated into English. (Pub. Hermann Bauer, Freiburg).
15. Jung: Answer to Job par. 613.
16. This is demonstrated subsequently in the chapter on Beethoven's horoscope.
17. Gladys Mayer in Colour and Healing (New Knowledge Books). She is following Rudolph Steiner's teachings on colour, and these in turn follow on from Goethe, whose colour theory was a couple of centuries in advance of his time, and considered by him a part of his work of major importance.
18. Quoted in the guide to the MusÉe de l'Orangerie in Paris.
19. This subject is gone into musically and in detail by the present writer in an essay entitled: Beethoven: "The Trilogy of Late Quartets."
20. There is a confusion between two alternatives for Monet's birthday, 14.2.1840 and 14.11.1840. The necessity, on astrological grounds, for the correctness of the first of these, and for Cancer on the Ascendant, is shown by Döbereiner in his book devoted to a discussion of the astrological sign-characteristics manifest in paintings: Astrologische Definierbare Verhaltensweisen in der Malerei (MÜnchner Rhythmenlehre). Some of the other Ascendants given here are also taken from Döbereiner.
21. Jane Roberts: The Unknown Reality Vol.I, p.224 in a note by Robert Butts.
22. Ibid. p.219.
23 Quoted by Thorwald Dethlefsen in German in Das Erlebnis der Wiedergeburt.
24. Nick Kollerstrom in the Astrological Journal, Autumn 1984.
25 Sakoian & Acker, Predictive Astrology, p.85.
26. All quotations from Steiner are from his autobiography, translated as The Course of My Life.
27. The new concept in biology of a "morphogenetic field" put forward by Rupert Sheldrake in A New Science of Life is a much more satisfactory way of accounting for such "inheritance". It clearly relates to the esoteric idea of a "group soul" representing humanity as a whole, and to the "etheric body" or formative body - or field - that controls the formation as well as the function and maintenance of the material and physical body and interpenetrates it until death, and is in fact the "life force".
CHAPTER TWO
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE TYPES
The contrast in viewpoint represented by the extravert and the introvert is fundamental to the whole human condition and its perennial problems of existence. The history of philosophy can be seen as an ongoing debate between these attitudes, as to whether "reality", "truth", ultimately God, is to be found outside, in the world - or up there, in heaven - or inside, in the psyche or "soul", between the "objective" point of view and the "subjective"; or more objectively stated, whether there can actually be such a thing as an "objective" view in any degree - that is, whether such words have any meaning. In the Zen adage, you are seeking the ox upon which you are riding. Science has in this century discovered that the observer and the observed are equally important, which is the gist of relativity theory; but this is a long way from having percolated through to general thinking and a realisation that all our theories and dogmas are subjective, and it is hard to shake off the extravert prejudice ingrained in our civilisation, and which in its crudest form is materialism or the taking of all sense-perceptions at their face value and as the only value. This is the cult of surfaces, which are taken as the only reality, even when the surfaces can be multiplied and subdivided by dissection and analysis down to atoms, or even waves of energy.
Jung devoted the first and major part of Psychological Types to an historical survey of the extravert-introvert division in philosophy, literature, and the writings of earlier thinkers who have perceived this division and more or less clearly delineated the differences between the two opposing attitudes. The conflict is between the consciousness of objects in the outer world and of ideas within, or universals; and over whether the latter have any reality. "As regards universals or generic concepts, the real question is whether they are substantial or merely intellectual" (Porphyry). 1 The latter position was in scholastic thought labelled nominalism, a sceptical attitude designating ideas as "mere names"; while regarding abstract or generic concepts as real or substantial was called realism. In terms of later philosophy "realism" came to have the reverse meaning and to stand for the sceptical attitude, taking for real only the objects of sense-perception in the material world, and thus to equate with materialism; while the other polarity, of emphasis on ideas and the inner world was called "idealism". The latter was represented notably by the German "idealist" philosophers, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Schlegel; the former most conspicuously by the French and English-Scottish schools, the Encyclopaedists and Locke, Hume and the later materialists.
The introverted attitude perceives the similarities of things, and thus forms concepts, while the extravert is fascinated more by their differences and diversity. The first abstracts from the object, the second empathises into the object. The twin fountain-heads of these seemingly irreconcilable currents of thought are Plato and Aristotle, who like the original Gemini Twins represent the sense of the divine and of the mortal, the inner reality and the outer, or the priority of pure ideas or of the phenomenal world. This is a difference in orientation of thinking, as indicated by the air sign Gemini and its ruler Mercury or Hermes, one of whose functions is as psychopomp, to mediate between the conscious world and the collective unconscious, the outside world and the world of the archetypes. The development of conscious thinking has been the main emphasis of the second half of the Piscean Age, or Western Culture, and the essential duality or polarisation of consciousness is brought to an extreme both in the double sign of Pisces and the Virgo-Pisces axis - in the contemporary world to the point of schizophrenia.
Analytical thinking, of Mercury and Virgo, applied to the material world and the manipulation of matter, has attained to an overwhelming and geometrically accelerating development during the second half of the Piscean age, accompanied by the virtual atrophying of the inner spiritual faculties of the mass of humanity. Thus, the balance is weighted right down at this end of the axis. As Pisces represents the unconscious, as a water sign, and feeling, specifically the religious and devotional feeling of Neptune, the age started with Christianity and the religion of love, in the sign of the exaltation of Venus. But the message of Christianity is also the development of the individual Self, from the ocean of the unconscious, represented by the fish symbol. The danger of individual consciousness is the identification of the Self with the conscious and separative ego (inflation), when the balance tips over to the opposite polarity, as we have it now. It is worth noting that one of the rulers of Pisces is Jupiter, a negative meaning of which is inflation.
The symbolism of the two fishes and Christianity has been developed admirably by Jung in Aion. One fish in the constellation is vertical, and the other horizontal, forming a cross, symbolising Christianity no less than matter; the mythos of the incarnation, of the descent of the spirit into matter. The cross within the circle is the glyph for the Earth, and Saturn, whose number is four, is the principle of incarnation. In this stage of planetary development, in occult teaching the fourth of the seven planetary "rounds", or the bottom of the involutionary curve, we have reached the greatest density, the maximum identification with matter; in Hindu esoteric teaching called the Kali Yuga, or Dark Age, lasting perhaps 5,000 years, and ending around the turn of the 19th century, when a re-ascent should have begun to a higher level of awareness.
Astrologically the sign Pisces has two aspects, and is "ruled" by both Neptune and Jupiter, two different, though related principles. Neptune, or Poseidon, as god of the oceans, whose palace is under the sea, represents the unconscious, and a different reality from that of the surface material world. It is the principle that dissolves substance or solidity, outlines and definitions, that leads to the higher feeling world in a cosmic or spiritual dimension, the principle of mysticism and devotional religion; or, from the material point of view, to mere dissolution, fog, or evaporation. Thus in a sense Neptune does away with space, and time as well, in as much as it is outside the realm of polarity (Saturn). If time is a barrier, Neptune transcends time, or goes through this barrier. Jupiter however, is the space god, within the orbit of Saturn - that is within the conscious material world, and is the principle of expansion in space, growth and inclusiveness, up to the limits of Saturn, if ultimately pointing to the beyond in the glyph of its primary sign Sagittarius ( ). Neptune can be thought of as associated with the first half of the Piscean Age, the vertical fish, and the spiritual aspiration of Christianity and Gothic art; Jupiter with the horizontal fish and the second half - in Jung's view the age of the antichrist, or the shadow. The shadow is the fourth component required for wholeness and incarnation into matter, and missing in the Christian Trinity. In Answer to Job he quotes Revelation 20.3 (AV) that Satan (another form of Saturn) is to be locked up for a thousand years, during which Christ shall reign, but after that the devil is to be let loose, presumably an enantiodromia, a reversal of polarity, for the second millenium. The vertical fish is also depth or going through levels, while the horizontal fish is space, and expansion over the surface. The second half of the age has witnessed an unprecedented expansion over the surface of the earth, and now, in this last century, into extraterrestrial space, both in thought and activity; navigating the oceans geographically, and the ocean of space mathematically. Thought in the same manner has spread horizontally over the surface of things ("facts"), at the expense of depth, multiplicity at the expense of unity, reaching the nadir of superficiality in the philosophy of materialism and positivism, the worship of the perceptible world and the outside. Thus our second millenium is overwhelmingly extravert in its orientation and values.
This great historical change was made manifest in the "Renaissance", a blossoming of outer culture in Italy, partly inspired by the forms and styles of Greco-Roman culture, quite alien to the spirit of Gothic culture. These centuries, from the eleventh to the sixteenth, saw the full flowering and high summer of European Culture (its "classical" period - Spengler), which in many ways found its most favourable environment in Italy. At the same time it was here that the influence of Greco-Roman forms was closest and most obvious. With the growing wealth and leisure of successful commerce in the Italian city-states, and its accompanying urbanity and humanism, went the rediscovery, translation and revival of Greek and Latin literature and thought. In this sense alone was there in this period a Re-naissance, and with this influence, centred in Italy, we enter upon the second half of the Piscean Age. However, "Musical composition down to the year 1500 was chiefly in the hands of the Flemish School" (Burckhardt) - music being the art most connected with time and the inner world. This difference in orientation is also strongly marked between the Northern schools of painting and those of Renaissance Italy, in style, subject matter - especially landscape, embodying the far view and distances, a Promethean or "idealist" orientation - and most particularly in the use and inner understanding of colour, something deeply connected with Neptune and the first fish.
The eventual blend of Gothic and Renaissance resulted in the style of the Baroque, which became dominant in seventeenth century Europe. To appreciate the extravert character and essence of Greco-Roman culture one has only to pass from the Egyptian section in the British Museum to the adjoining Greek section. From a culture focused on the beyond, on another reality than the material - the statues and figures gaze with one accord into another world - we come abruptly to an emphasis everywhere on the surface of things and the physical world. It is in a sense to pass from a dimmer light into the clear light of consciousness, and we can reflect on the Greek predilection for the foreground, as Spengler pointed out - dimness, or distance in time or space was antipathetical to the Greeks to the point of heresy, and the dominant emphasis in architecture is on the horizontal line. The development by the Greeks of rational philosophy is undoubtedly a concomitant of this orientation towards consciousness and the immediate present. Western or Christian Culture is again in fundamental contrast, its essence expressed in the Gothic cathedrals, so overwhelmingly vertical that it is hard to find any horizontal lines; and characterised by the dimly lit interiors, with stained glass windows, reaching up into distant heights and intersecting vaults, corresponding closely to the interweaving voices of polyphonic music. The Greco-Roman culture was a phenomenon of the age of Aries, the Egyptian of Taurus, and adjacent signs, as much as their cultures, are in sharp contrast to one another - a demonstration of the principle of discontinuity in nature.
The double nature of our sign Pisces comes out not only in the contrast between the devotional aspect of the Christian religion, aspiring to God like the Gothic spires, and the expansive, Jupiterian second fish, but in the dualism of spirit and matter inherent in Christian theology itself. This dualism probably made inevitable the reversal of polarity into the opposite and earth sign Virgo. Our Virgoan analytical thinking has been preoccupied with the diversity and details of the phenomenal world at the expense of the unifying and over-all or synthetic view. The philosophy of unity or wholeness is characteristic of all ancient and intuitive world views, and of the Pythagorean, Neo-Platonic and Hermetic currents surviving underground in post-Renaissance Europe. It is significant that Christian Scholastic philosophy, in line with the Renaissance, took Aristotle as its model, just as did the developing scientific thinking and rationalism, orientated towards concretism and the methodical and rational analysis of the outer and material world.
The opposite polarity in thinking gives priority to the inner world as the primary or superior reality, and is based not upon sensation but upon intuition. Throughout history we find these two opposing viewpoints in philosophy, as though modelled on the parliamentary system, and they regularly manifest in the form of paired opposites, as in the case of Plato and Aristotle. Thus we have Descartes and Spinoza; the dualism between mind and matter of Descartes leads to materialism and the main-line development of Western thought, while for Spinoza mind and matter are "two attributes of the single substance" - corresponding to the principle of "Mind only" of Buddhist philosophy. For him Aristotelian logic must be discarded; while the true idea of a single comprehensive system is revealed only in intuitive knowledge. The degree of adequacy or truth of ideas depends ultimately on the degree of comprehensiveness of the logical system of which they can be shown to be a part. Moreover: "He who has a true idea knows that he has a true idea and cannot doubt the truth of the thing perceived". Spinoza was an intuitive type, with Sun in Sagittarius and Mercury ahead of the Sun, while Descartes, with Sun in Aries, and therefore also an intuitive, of a different quality, had Mercury eighteen and a half degrees behind the Sun.
The unitive world view was naturally that of Hermetic philosophers and counter-culture figures such as Paracelsus (introvert Capricorn). Unity is pagan, inherent in "that religious feeling for nature, so alien to Christianity".2 Nature "strives not for isolation but for union"; whereas the Christian era is represented by the dual sign of the fishes. "The light from above" divides the opposites. The dualism of mind and matter became the dominant schism of the later era, severing all relationship between the ego and the outside world, between subject and object, and simultaneously between the ego and the inside, between conscious and unconscious.3 The ego became isolated as surface-consciousness, in opposition to "Nature", or the outside world, one could say in opposition to God. Analytical attention was focused exclusively on this alien outside in the extravert manner, on the world of the senses (Virgo as an earth sign, of sense-perception). What in Buddhism is called Maya, illusion, came to have an absolute and sole validity, as even mind was not granted any reality independent of matter except in a provisional sense and as some kind of accident or quirk of statistics.
We have been considering the introvert-extravert orientation in the context of history and philosophy, and of the Piscean Age, of the two fishes of the constellation itself, and of the Pisces-Virgo polarity. The centrifugal movement from unity to diversity is the history of creation, and also of the development of consciousness, of which discrimination and the confrontation of the opposites is a condition. The evolution of individual consciousness and intellectual discrimination has been the task of the age, but we have eventually lost sight of the centre and become scattered and divided, and hallucinated by surfaces. We have overshot the mark. There has to come a turning point and a centripetal and cyclic movement, a return towards unity, but on a higher level, of a more conscious and discriminating kind, of conscious individuals. This does not mean a return to unconscious unity and pre-Piscean or pre-Christian conditions, to a dissolution of individual consciousness in the ocean, either of the cosmos or the unconscious. This would be the negative aspect of Neptune, and is that to which the real Western teachers or prophets, including Jung, Rudhyar and Steiner, were agreed in being opposed. But it means a return to the centre, to the real Self, as opposed to the separative ego, and an integration of consciousness with the Self. This was Jung's message, and was, and is, the real teaching of the gospel story, Christ being the symbol and representative of the Self. The fish symbolism which permeates the gospels and many things in Christianity is an expression of this, and in the parable of the loaves and the fishes the Virgo polarity, the harvest sign of the Virgin with the sheaf of corn, is also delineated.4
The introvert and extravert points of view do of course both function in each individual, and are functions of adaptation, of relating the inner individual and the psyche to the conditions of existence in the outside world, though it seems that one of these orientations always predominates over the other. In other words we are never perfectly adapted and balanced, or at least not initially. Or perhaps society needs exaggerations, because an equalisation of functions would lower the level of the superior one.
In the social context the difference is best illustrated by Spitteler's poem on "Prometheus and Epimetheus" which Jung discusses at length, 5 with their respective problems. Epimetheus "has followed his extraversion, and, because this orients him to the external object, he is caught up in the desires and expectations of the world, seemingly at first to his great advantage". He is a traditionalist, a rationalist, optimist, and conforms to public opinion; he strides forth "like a man inspired by the contemplation of his own right-doing" (Spitteler). He is a social success and becomes king; but he has betrayed his soul. Whereas Prometheus "sacrifices all connection with the present in order to create by forethought a distant future". "Consciousness has two attitudes: the Promethean, which withdraws the libido from the world, introverting without giving out, and Epimethean, constantly giving out and responding in a soulless fashion, fascinated by the claims of external objects". 5 The introvert sees the outside inside, while the extravert sees the inside outside. The latter imagines that ideas or concepts correspond to objects, not seeing that objects merely represent or stimulate ideas. This represents a naive concretism, as Jung says "the superstition that dwells in formulated concepts".
At various levels and in various degrees the contrast in orientation appears in all fields, and is often represented by paired figures; thus Mozart and Beethoven. These two have been very aptly compared to Orpheus and Prometheus, the two founders of human culture in Greek Mythology. "Just as the wisdom of Orpheus, the magic power of his song, and the signature of his fate" (incurred for looking back while in the World of the Dead) "point to the past, so the stealing of fire, and the tragic fate of Prometheus" (he was cast into Tartarus because he would not reveal the secret of the end of the gods' reign, there to await his destined deliverance by Herakles) "indicate the future." The same source points out that the Orpheus myth is re-enacted in "The Magic Flute", but with a positive outcome (the prince does not look back - or in this case, speak - to Pamina). The flute here replaces Orpheus' lyre. Mozart's music can be said to be looking back to Arcadia, Beethoven's looking forward to Elysium.6 We find in Mozart a perfection of sensibility and finesse, and phenomenal facility, one is immediately captivated by it in the present, one thinks: "What wonderful music!" -regardless of context - in the operas, for example. He is carrying on the tradition established by Haydn, not breaking new ground, and not really stirring the deeper layers of the psyche, with no concern for the larger cycles of change, or issues at the historical or aeonic level. These on the other hand are the sole concern of Beethoven, one of the great prophets of change, and to the core revolutionary, in form and technique as well as in content. He can in fact be identified with the mythical Prometheus, and embodies everything for which Prometheus stood. 7 Even explicitly, the theme from the Prometheus ballet recurs through Beethoven's work. We have already noted that Beethoven belongs to the introvert intuitive type, while in the horoscope of Mozart the Sun is in Aquarius, with Mercury in close conjunction, but half a degree behind. A sharp division can be observed moreover between people who venerate Mozart far beyond Beethoven, and those with the reverse taste; for example the Danish composer Carl Nielsen belonged to the former, while Beethoven meant little or nothing to him, being seemingly incomprehensible to his viewpoint. 8 We find, naturally, that Nielsen like Mozart was an extravert, by reference to his horoscope 9.
The basic division of viewpoints is complicated, or further differentiated, by consideration of the four function types, and these are differentiated still further in astrology by the division of each function type into three modes, cardinal, fixed and mutable. Thus feeling types may be not only introvert or extravert, but also manifest as Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces, which represent decidedly different modes of feeling, and decidedly different characters. These differences sometimes obscure the issue, but they have to be taken into account, and they add a great deal in refinement to the psychological type-delineations, giving twenty four distinct types in place of Jung's eight, or in place of the twelve zodiacal types of traditional astrology. Similarly each mode appears in the form of all four elements or function types, forming a cross in the horoscope. 10
The greater complication or differentiation of the simple introvert-extravert issue brought in by astrology, as well as the unambiguous spelling out of the factors involved, is well illustrated by the examples of Goethe and Schiller, discussed by Jung as a pair of opposites. He devotes a long chapter in Psychological Types to Schiller's own extraordinarily perceptive ideas on the Type Problem, developed in his "On the Aesthetic Education of Man", and argues in considerable detail that Schiller himself must have belonged to the introvert thinking type. Schiller's horoscope however shows an extravert feeling type, with Sun in Scorpio. An extravert Scorpio is surely a difficult combination to unravel, and seems intrinsically a contradiction; this could well have put Jung out on this occasion, not having astrology to clarify the question. Examples of philosophers belonging to water signs and being extravert are Voltaire (Scorpio), Schopenhauer (Pisces), and Keyserling (Cancer). Belonging to a feeling type does not prevent one from thinking, and one could relate the kind of thinking in these cases to the sign and to other factors in the horoscope; thus the barbed wit of Voltaire is very characteristic for Mars conjunct Mercury, and the Sun in Scorpio, while Schopenhauer's relation to "Indian metaphysics" and perhaps pessimism is well explained by three planets in Neptune's sign, including Sun conjunct Saturn. Pure abstract thinking, on the other hand, such as the critique of the exact meanings of words and concepts, and the discriminatory classification of ideas, can be observed in experience to be foreign territory to water types - it makes them ill at ease and defensive, and they cannot think clearly in that context. 28
In Schiller's case Jung mentions a number of characteristics that seem to contradict his conclusion that Schiller was an introvert. One is Schiller's admiration for ancient Greek culture, which was a culture of external forms and surfaces, of the visible foreground and the concrete; in Spengler's words "the most sensual...of all possible culture forms". Time, and the beyond (or the unconscious) were antipathetical to Greek culture - hence the condemnation of Socrates. Further, Schiller's "over-valuation of intellectualism" and "rationalism" is an extravert trait, and perhaps also a sign of "inferior" thinking - i.e. of a feeling type, and the "conflict between imagination and abstraction" in him, of which he was very conscious, is surely to be attributed to his conjunction of Sun and Mercury in Scorpio. If this had not been in Scorpio there might have been no conflict. Scorpio, instinctuality, would embody the "barbarism" of which he complains, as not subject to the reason of Sun-Mercury; if he had been an air type it would have been so subject. This may have been the conflict that Jung detects in Schiller; while Schiller's "expect of me no great material wealth of ideas" (in a letter to Goethe) "for that is what I find in you" sounds more extravert, and not like a thinking type. The antagonism of the sensual and the rational world worried Schiller the poet versus the thinker. He acknowledges the equal rights of the two polarities, and seeks to unite instinctuality (Scorpio) and thinking (Mercury). Jung comments on his "psychological observation" - a well-known attribute of Scorpio. "The idea of devotion was constantly present in Schiller's mind" - aesthetic devotion, but this points to the dominance of feeling and water. 11
In Goethe on the other hand, whom Jung judges extravert, though he is less sure about this, we see an introvert Virgo, or sensation type, with a Scorpio Ascendant. Introvert sensation is again seemingly contradictory and liable to cause confusion. Goethe's scientific studies involved an intense contemplation of the sense world; but this resulted in the production of internalised concepts - archetypal plant forms - or quite revolutionary ideas such as his Colour Theory, which verges on the psychic (Moon in Pisces). Carlyle, in his essay on Schiller, compares Goethe and Schiller as poets, and perceives very clearly the introvert characteristics of the former as against the extravert ones of the latter: "No one knew better than himself (i.e. Schiller), that as Goethe was a born Poet, so he was in great part a made Poet; that as one spirit was intuitive, all-embracing, instinct with melody, so the other was scholastic, divisive, only partially and as it were artificially melodious." And of Schiller as philosopher: "his intellect... strong, penetrating, yet systematic and scholastic rather than intuitive; and manifesting this tendency both in the objects it treats, and in its manner of treating them... " Jung himself describes, later, the second part of Faust as "an alchemical encounter with the unconscious comparable to the labor Sophiae of Paracelsus...an endeavour to understand the archetypal world of the psyche" 12 - something which could under no circumstances be undertaken by an extravert. Jung calls Faust "the Medieval Prometheus". "The devil", he writes, "everywhere displays a true Epimethean thinking, a thinking in terms of 'nothing but' which reduces All to Nothing". 13
In the above quotation, Jung is using the term "Epimethean" to denote a crude form of extraversion, but we have to consider the question of level of development, so that at one extreme extraversion may take the form of the inability to see beyond the "rational" world of surfaces or material sense-perception, while at the other we are talking about whether God is to be found inside or outside the psyche, or "the relativity of God". Schiller uses the terms Idealist and Realist for the division in philosophical viewpoint, but the whole question, even the whole future of humanity, hinges on what is "real". The naive view of reality regards the perceived world as "objective", that is as having absolute validity just as we perceive it, and existing independently of the subject, and it is from this unquestioned premise that "rationalist" philosophers set out. That this type of thinking is extravert is nearly always confirmed by the Mercury test; but we find at the same time that it is usually associated with a strong emphasis on earth signs, especially Taurus, the most directly sense-orientated earth sign, connected through the second house and Venus with material values and solidity, as the fixed earth sign. Closely contemporary with Descartes and born in the late sixteenth century was Hobbes, prominent as a nominalist philosopher, who like Descartes had Sun in Aries, but Mars, Mercury, Saturn and Venus in Taurus; while born in the same year as Spinoza, in 1632, was Locke, with Sun in Virgo and Mercury following the Sun in Libra. In the 18th century on the extravert side we have the French Encyclopaedists, of whom we have already noticed Voltaire with Sun in Scorpio, and Mars conjunct Mercury in Sagittarius, opposite Uranus, emphasising still more his iconoclasm and predominantly sarcastic and mocking disposition, strongly recalling Mephistopheles, the spirit of denial. (Mephistopheles is a figure eminently native to Scorpio, the waters of Lethe, and its planetary principle Pluto.) While opposed to this whole tendency in 18th century France and representing the predominance of inner values, of sensibility and the natural, as against the rational world, was Rousseau, whose Sun was in Cancer, with Venus, Mercury and Mars ahead of the Sun and conjunct in Gemini. 28
In England too, realism was dominant, represented by Hume - Sun preceding Mercury in Taurus - and such figures as Samuel Johnson, with both bodies in Virgo, and again extravert. A hundred years later, on the same side, we can note, in France, Auguste Comte, a social philosopher with Sun in Capricorn, and Mercury following in Aquarius; and in England John Stuart Mill the economist, who has Sun and Mercury conjunct Mars in Taurus, but is shown to be introvert, as these rise ahead of the Sun. The situation is very similar in the case of Bertrand Russell, born in 1872, who although a materialist philosopher ("logical positivist") is nevertheless an introverted one, but, to make up for it as it were, has a stellium of five planets in Taurus, including all the personal planets except Moon. Marx however had no introverted disposition, but Sun, Moon and Venus in Taurus, with Mercury close to Venus in Gemini, while Lenin followed suit with four planets in Taurus, including Sun and Mercury, the latter behind.
Although at one extreme Taurus can be very material, the sign of body and substance, and remain there - the bull - on another level it rules the throat, the singing voice, and thence music, and also, as a sign of Venus, generally art, beauty and adornment. Or we can say that Venus manifests through matter and sensation into an expression in these realms. Thus at a higher level of orientation to the object, or the outside world, one can arrive at a non-material or higher reality just through sense-perception, just as much as through introversion or yogic meditation. This was Steiner's emphasis, and to some extent Goethe's, in his scientific researches, and this explains Steiner's affinity with Goethe, though the latter was concerned with pure or archetypal ideas, or with internalising, rather than with penetrating into other worlds or dimensions through the sense-world. Steiner as an extravert insists on having it this way round, though he would have us bring ideas along with us. The "astral" or "etheric" worlds are higher dimensions of reality, of higher energies that are normally imperceptible to us, though they form part of the aura or subtle bodies. These exist objectively and independently of us, whether we perceive them or no, and have their own inhabitants and forms. In astrology the astral world is symbolised by Neptune, and it is also the world of higher feeling, and of colour. Anthroposophists say that one can penetrate into this world through colour, by an intense contemplation and in-depth understanding of colour; it can be perceived clairvoyantly, by a different sense from ordinary sight, and by activating the third eye, between the eyebrows. Jung might say that perception of the "astral" world or its contents is the projection of unconscious contents, and results from an "abaissement du niveau mental" - i.e. a lowering of the threshold of discriminating consciousness. Ouspensky, in A New Model of the Universe, puts it thus: "The 'astral sphere' from an ordinary point of view may be defined as the subjective world projected outside us and taken for the objective world." There is no doubt whatever that such projection does occur, and Jung would have had more opportunity than anyone to observe and verify it. But it is also equally undeniable that it may be at other times an "haussement du niveau mental", to a higher level of perception, a less dense and material level, and that such higher or subtle energies exist. The material world is merely a transitory condensation of these energies, and Eastern yogis and healers know how to work with them and to control this process, and thus transcend matter. 14 When one admits the simplest 'E.S.P.' phenomenon, clairvoyance, telepathy or telekinesis - and this is unavoidable - then the whole world of "miracles" becomes possible, and we cannot rule out materialisation or dematerialisation at will.
Jung attributes to material and psychic (outer and inner) realities equal status, but he does not admit more than one kind (the material kind) of outer reality. He attacks "Theosophy and spiritualism", sometimes coming under the heading of "Indian Metaphysics", by which he means all occult philosophies which treat of a relativity of "realities"; that is of higher orders of reality than that of our representations of the external world according to our sense-perceptions. This means higher orders of "objective" reality, outside of ourselves; for Jung the choice is between outer and inner, concrete and psychic reality (within the psyche or pertaining to the unconscious), not between different orders of outer reality. It is presumably through trying to be fair to the extravert side, and to remain "scientific" in the popular sense, that he avoids a critique of the concept "reality", and does not go into "comparative reality". He is essentially the successor of Kant as the leading exponent of the psychological or introvert position. In the 18th and 19th centuries this was represented by the German "Idealists", in the first place by Kant who was born in 1724. He too had Sun in 2 ¡ of Taurus, but Mercury was with the Moon in Aries, hence ahead of the Sun. Carlyle puts it thus: "The Kantist, in direct contradiction to Locke and all his followers, both of the French, and English or Scottish school, commences from within, and proceeds outwards; instead of commencing from without, and, with various precautions and hesitations, endeavouring to proceed inwards." 15 He takes as an example the fact, from observation and clear evidence, of the Sun's going round the earth, which is equivalent to "our evidence for an external, independent existence of Matter, and in general with our whole argument against Hume."
Once we are incarnated in the earth realm our whole view of the material world and our perceptions of "reality" are structured (Saturn) in terms of space and time. This is the feeling of life on earth; everything is in flux and change, but life seems to be more changing and transitory than the earth itself, or solid matter, such as rock. So we can say that everything changes, or is in constant flux and motion, and that change is relative, and perhaps the only constant, or reality, applying even to our perceptions of the stars and planets. Kant defined time as becoming, and space as what has become. One can also see that from the point of view of the individual organism, time is our perception of internal change, or change in ourselves, space our perception of change in the outside world in relation to ourselves. Our perception of movement is of change in the relative positions of things outside from our own point of view, and in relation to our own rate of metabolism, and our perception of distance is determined by the movement and focus of the eye, and the consequent estimate of the time relationship between one object and another - i.e. the time it would take us to travel between them, in terms of our own physiology and life-span.
Or we can say that space is the consciousness of diversity - of things outside the centre of consciousness, time the unity of consciousness, the persisting and inner consciousness itself, which is synthetical. These are the two pure forms of sensuous intuition, as principles of knowledge to which we are conditioned, which are given, and a priori, and ultimately: "Time is a condition a priori of all phenomena whatsoever" (Kant). (Astrologically Saturn, as Father Time, is the ruler and conditioning archetype of incarnation into matter, and the ring-pass-not of the limits of the solar system.) Kant showed time and space to be purely subjective modes of perception, and reduced the object of sense-perception to the status of a mere stimulus, the real nature of which we can never know. This is the exact opposite of the materialist and rationalist position, and is wholly Platonic, while it is also precisely the position of Relativity Theory and the New Physics. "The structures and phenomena we observe in nature are nothing but creations of our measuring and categorising minds". (Fritjof Capra, "The Tao of Physics"). We find the same statement in "Tales of Power" by Castaneda: "One can arrive at the totality of oneself only when one fully understands that the world is merely a view.." Perception is determined by the a priori content of knowledge, and as far as the outside world is concerned, is selective. You find what you are looking for. This is the introvert position of judgement before the event; judgement after the event is a posteriori, the extravert practice. It will be appreciated how the former is symbolised by Mercury (the conceptualising function) ahead of the Sun, and the latter by Mercury behind the Sun - a posteriori. For the introvert, the idea comes first, in so far as we can only know things in terms of, or by reference to, the pre-existing categories in our own minds. The phenomenal world is only appearance, and essentially illusion; we cannot know things in themselves (Kant's Ding an Sich) except in so far as they are in us, and a priori. In other words all is one, while time and space are the duality of perception on which consciousness depends, and represent the observer and the observed. These are now recognised in physics as not so distinct as they used to be, and comparable to the choice between the wave and the particle concept as to the nature of light - it depends on how you look at it.
We must note furthermore that it is just consciousness that is limited in space and time, and not the psyche as a whole, or the unconscious part of it; as we all know there are many and incontrovertible psychic phenomena in which the space-time barrier seems to be annulled, and this even regularly happens in dreams. It is therefore only to be expected that the constellation of meanings that are grouped around the Saturn archetype includes consciousness or the conscious ego, and the space-time barrier, another aspect of the ring-pass-not of Saturn, is a necessary feature of consciousness, at least in the earth realm or within the orbit of Saturn. Outside of that there may be a different kind of consciousness, not dependent upon the opposites, and inaccessible to us, of the kind referred to in mystical teachings as cosmic consciousness.
In ordinary reasoning the appearance of the world within the Saturnian structures of space, time and consciousness, and subject to our psychological and sensory conditioning, is taken as objective and absolute, the unassailable facts from which the reason sets out and upon which it is based. Our senses only register the material world in relation to our own size and physiology, and so what we perceive is largely a reflection of ourselves. But this is all we can see in the ordinary way, and rationalism bases itself on this extraverted premise, which must not be questioned, or it arouses neurotic defense mechanisms - for the other side of us and the other kind of knowledge has been repressed - associated with feeling and our feminine side, which turns negative in the unconscious. This kind of rationalism leads logically to materialism, since it imagines it perceives nothing but matter. But when we say "rationalism" we imply the use of reason, or the thinking function, in a completely one-sided manner, as though the other three equally vital functions do not exist, or count for nothing. We make the naive assumption that all our experiences are "objective", and that the only subjective factor that can sometimes intrude upon our judgement is the regrettable one of "feeling". In other words everything is projected and seen as outside, even when this vision is highly conditioned and contaminated by factors inside. The thinking function however is the one by which, nowadays, we mainly have to orientate and adjust ourselves to the world, and it does not have to be used in this destructive and repressive fashion. It can be attuned to the other functions and become more conscious. It can become aware of the unconscious, and extend its field, and become in reality objective, or more so, and empirical, instead of merely deluding itself that it is these things. It will then include Intuition as the other pole of perception, that is perception of the unconscious, and regard it as just as real and objective as perception through the senses. We then have the two polarities of inner and outer perception, which can be equated with introversion and extraversion:
Introversion - Fire - immaterial (the spiritual)
Extraversion - Earth - solid matter (the concrete)
Between them we have the two fluid elements, water and air, representing feeling and thinking, the judgemental or subjective as opposed to perceiving or objective functions. These, to maintain a balanced and realistic position, should mediate and flow freely between the two objective poles, taking both into account in order to orientate the individual correctly to the world he lives in, or in other words to maintain sanity. Thus:
Non-Aristotelian logic INTUITION Higher realities (Meaning)
Thinking Feeling
Aristotelian logic SENSATION Material reality (Form)
In German the two words Verstand and Vernunft apply to thinking, and we can translate them as Understanding and Reason, respectively. Carlyle makes much of these words as used or implied by Kant, but he gets them the wrong way round. Kant's Critique is of Pure Reason (Vernunft), by which he means reasoning in and for itself and based on appearances (extraverted). Understanding on the other hand is thinking which takes both poles into account, and also feeling, or the sense of values - and where should we be without being able to evaluate anything? "Value judgement" is a common slogan used by rationalist thinking as a defense against whole thinking or understanding.
Among paired philosophers representing the opposite viewpoints the most prominent after Spinoza and Descartes are certainly Kant and Hegel. Hegel was born in 1770, forty six years after "the sage of Königsberg", but nevertheless represents the most influential contrary movement to Kant's philosophy, and one that became dominant and prevails right up to the last decade of the twentieth century. His name has become the stock-in-trade of every semi-educated pseudo-intellectual, and is automatically trotted out in every possible and impossible context, together with the magic formula "dialectic". This in spite of the fact that he is classed with the group of "German Idealists", and was not at all overtly nominalist, realist or materialist; on the contrary, his best known philosophical work is "The Phenomenology of the Spirit", and he says many things with which a philosopher of the other polarity would immediately agree. However this is deceptive, and he later became coupled with Marx as the original inspiration of Dialectic Materialism.
Hegel had Sun and Mercury in Virgo, Mercury a posteriori, in the sign of analytical thinking, ruled by Mercury and an earth sign, and therefore the polar opposite to fire or intuition. This means that intuition is inferior, and Hegel's Mercury is square Jupiter, the archetype of meaning, in its own fire sign Sagittarius. Mars is in Gemini, Mercury's other sign, an air sign for thinking, but square the Sun. Hegel wrote: "In themselves feelings are as such in no way either worth while or true"; and: "Free, concrete thought is concerned only with itself". "When man's thinking is genuinely rational", he tells us, "he is without limits, infinite." This is certainly an inflation of Vernunft, or Reason, which is confused with Spirit, and it is a completely one-sided view of thinking, an exclusive idealisation of the conscious mind or ego. In Jung's view Hegel was an outstanding case of inflation, which he defines as confusing the ego with the Self, and he treats him to some of his most ruthless comments : "In Hegel (we find).. the practical equation of philosophical reason with Spirit, thus making possible that intellectual juggling with the object which achieved such a horrid brilliance in his philosophy of the State." "The victory of Hegel over Kant dealt the gravest blow to reason and to the further development of the German and, ultimately, of the European mind, all the more dangerous as Hegel was a psychologist in disguise, who projected great truths out of the subjective sphere into a cosmos he himself had created." Astrology seems to confirm Jung's criticism, and the squares to Sun and Mercury of Mars in Gemini and Jupiter in Sagittarius, with Mars also opposite Jupiter, do suggest a rationalistic inflation. For the Sun, which inherently represents spirit, in the earth sign Virgo, is square (at odds with) Mars in Gemini, the sign of rational thinking, as is Mercury, the rational function itself; while this whole complex is in inharmonious relations to Jupiter, the archetype of intuitive thinking and meaning, in its own sign of higher philosophy. The negative aspect of the expansive implications of Jupiter is inflation, here specifically of rational thinking. Neptune too would be between Sun and Mercury and partake in these squares, 16 adding the implication of delusion.
In more recent times, Kant's epistemological criticism has merged into psychology proper, while the rest of academic philosophy has divided into the philosophy of physics, on the one hand, and on the other into the mere inflation of language. Jung is the direct successor of Kant - one might almost think a reincarnation: "As we know, there is no human experience, nor would experience be possible at all, without the intervention of a subjective aptitude. What is this subjective aptitude? Ultimately it consists in an innate psychic structure which allows man to have experiences of this kind." 17 His work on the unconscious and the archetypes carries on where Kant left off, and he is the twentieth century exponent of this pole of philosophy, in a direct line from Plato, even though not included as a philosopher in the discipline going under that name. It is significant in this regard to hear him say, in the interview he gave near the end of his life to John Freeman for the B.B.C., that the study of Kant was a decisive influence in his early years, as was his encounter with Goethe's Faust.
A very obvious manifestation of paired opposites, and one that is very close to us, is Jung and Freud. Freud was nineteen years senior to Jung, and it is usually stated that Jung was his "pupil" or "disciple", which is quite untrue. Jung's researches were parallel to those of Freud, and he had already developed his own thinking quite independently, and in an entirely different environment, when he came in contact with Freud's ideas in the latter's Interpretation of Dreams, sometime before he met Freud. Since they had much in common and were both pioneering research into unconscious complexes, Jung publicly championed Freud, before he had met him, and at a time when this was a very unpopular cause. Nevertheless beyond this basic and initial mutual recognition of the importance of the unconscious, their approaches were entirely different and belong to the two opposite polarities we have been considering. While "Jung's psychology goes to the roots of the problem of human life and heralds a new era of psychological and philosophical understanding" (Rudhyar) 18 , "Freud once hoped to reduce psychology to neurology and mind to body" (Alan Watts) 19. Freud's whole approach is reductionist - to reduce "All to Nothing" -, materialist and Epimethean: "What Darwin and Freud sought to destroy was the so-called Platonic concept of a 'spiritual' world of Ideas or Archetypes prior to the 'physical' world of material organisms" (Rudhyar) 20. The aim of Freudian psychoanalysis is to restore the patient to "normality", i.e. to fit into the status quo - again a truly Epimethean and extravert approach; while the aim of Jungian therapy is the opposite one of helping him to a realisation of his true self and to rise above the collective norms, as an independent individual.
We find in Freud's horoscope four planets in Taurus, including Sun conjunct Uranus, with Mercury trailing, also in Taurus. In most current versions the Ascendant is in Scorpio, which seems very suitable, and Mephistophelian, although Rudhyar has it in Cancer. Marie-Louise von Franz judges Freud to have belonged to the introverted feeling type, and whatever her reasons for this, she may have been misled by certain characteristics pertaining to a Scorpio Ascendant. While research into unconscious repressions is very much in keeping with Scorpio, Freud could under no circumstances have been an introvert, as his whole attitude to life contradicts this; and in line with a number of the examples we have already noticed, it is an attitude quite characteristic of a strong emphasis on Taurus. In this case the horoscope is orientated along the Taurus-Scorpio axis, the fixed signs of sensation-feeling, the axis specifically related to sexuality, quite in line with Freud's inclination to reduce all psychological motivation to sexuality, overt or repressed. Jung on the other hand, whose Sun was in Leo, and Ascendant, or at any rate first house in Aquarius, was on the axis at right angles to this, of thinking-intuition, representing the world of ideas and archetypes in contrast to the physical. Together these four fixed signs correspond to the four beasts of the Apocalypse - or the three beasts and the Angel - and the four evangelists.
A particularly clear-cut and explicit pair of opposites is shown by Freud and Adler, who really was his pupil, the psychologist of "The Will to Power". Jung discusses their two mutually contradictory theories in the first chapters of Two Essays:
"With Adler the emphasis is placed on the subject who, no matter what the object, seeks his own security and supremacy; with Freud the emphasis is placed wholly on objects, which, according to their specific character, either promote or hinder the subject's desire for pleasure....The spectacle of this dilemma made me ponder the question: are there at least two different human types, one of them more interested in the object, the other more interested in himself? And does that explain why the one sees only the one, and the other only the other, and thus each arrives at totally different conclusions?"
Adler's horoscope is given by Rudhyar in Astrology and the Modern Psyche, and it shows Cancer rising, with Sun and Mercury in Aquarius, Mercury ahead of the Sun - i.e. in an earlier degree and therefore rising ahead of the Sun.
That Jung also forms a pair of opposites with Steiner we have already seen, but here it is not a question of a crude materialistic form of extraversion but of whether the spiritual world, indeed the archetypes themselves, are to be thought of as psychological, as components of the psyche, or whether they are projected (as a psychologist would say) and thought of as inhabitants of spiritual worlds outside and independent of the psyche. For Steiner the archetypes exist in personified forms as angelic hierarchies, archangels, as external gods, as for the Greeks; "the ancient Rhine" is comparable to an entity like Tapio, the forest god of Finnish mythology. Figures like Prometheus or Gilgamesh become actual culture heroes who have existed historically, a form of extraverted concretism of a much higher order than the reductionism of Freudian theory. Jung writes: "When the extravert proceeds to introvert, he arrives at a state of inferior relatedness to collective ideas, an identity with collective thinking of an archaic, concretistic kind, which one might call sensation thinking." 21 "If angels are anything at all, they are personified transmitters of unconscious contents that are seeking expression". 22 But as symbols or archetypes they could just as well be outside. Some people who are psychic or clairvoyant say they can see angels, or fairies (nature spirits); there certainly are energies, or beings, outside, whereas the forms in which they appear might be personal or cultural, or influenced by the contents of the observing mind. The observer is part of the observed, and these forms vary with different cultures and periods. Although this might suggest "projections" it is not as simple as that, and is a question of the nature of visions of all kinds. These exist objectively in the realm of ideas or thought-forms, but have not fully materialised or become concrete. The Munich astrologer Wolfgang Döbereiner, in the context of the appearance of U.F.O.'s at Woronesch, explains it in this way:
"They are no Will o' the Wisps, no projections or imagination, they are de facto forms which have not been incorporated into life, because they remain in the unconscious." and: "The U.F.O. did in fact appear...It is a matter of the unresolved structures which, as repressed figures of experience, whirl around everywhere and have no entry into polarity...because they may not come into time...And now they have appeared as de facto repressed figurations, but are no projections of the human soul, rather what it has repressed, and is in fact the repressed itself, fully independent of the person." 23
The relation between the realm of ideas, or of the archetypes, and that of Saturn, polarity, time, materialisation and historicity, is not as simple as it seems to the protagonists of either the psychological or the literal points of view, and we shall take it up again in Chapter Three in the context of myth and a closer examination of what an archetype might be. In the meantime it is interesting to note that Steiner, as a representative of extraversion, upheld Hegel - certainly not a circumstance that shows clear thinking, but consistent with "inferior" thinking, of a feeling type - and disapproved of Kant because of his agnosticism with regard to the object. He was also inclined to disapprove of Plato, and constantly held up Aristotle as a key culture hero. Steiner's spirit world is similar to that of Theosophy and he claimed to see into it and to be able to read the akashic records, or perhaps to see time from another dimension. The conclusions arrived at from the two opposite approaches are often identical: for example, "integration of the unconscious, a veritable bath of renewal in the life-source...as in sleep, intoxication and death. Hence the sleep of incubation, the Dionysian orgy, and the ritual death in initiation" (Jung). 24 While in Steiner's words: "During sleep the forces used up during waking life are restored. Forces of consciousness are katabolic. While man is awake the whole process is one of destruction". 25 Both statements compare with the astrological version of this idea given by Thomas Ring, where renewal in the unconscious takes place at the I.C. (the lower meridian), and the expenditure of energies in the conscious, outer world at the M.C. (Zenith). 26 The conclusions of Jung on education came close to Steiner's, even to thinking in terms of seven-year periods of development - which are also, of course, astrological. Steiner went further and actually founded schools accordingly.
As soon as we start thinking in terms of other dimensions of reality we are much more in Steiner's environment than that of Jung, who, probably as a matter of policy and as a voluntarily imposed boundary, did not go any further in this direction than his thinking in terms of synchronicity, an "a-causal orderedness" in the universe. This last idea has now fully surfaced in science in the form of "Chaos" theory. Jung did not go into or develop any theories of evolution or cosmogony, and even in his thinking on Gnostic and alchemical symbols - for example the Anthropos, the greater or cosmic man - he did not go outside his concept of the Self, the psychic symbol of wholeness, or a kind of higher and supra-individual consciousness. For this the mandala is a regularly recurring symbol, for example in dreams, as well as in Eastern thought, and this is what is constellated in the horoscope.
On the other hand, Steiner's statements on the evolution of man and the solar system are extremely interesting and far-reaching, if utterly incompatible with all accepted, accustomed and "scientific" notions of things. They could however easily be accommodated by astrology which, for those who understand it, shares a similar degree of incompatibility. In this kind of context, Steiner uses the language of objective reality, even when describing the progressive stages of materialisation of the solar system and man and the hierarchies of spirits involved in this, while Jung talks only of symbols, that is of subjective and psychic intangibles. But it is an area where the two approaches really merge and become indistinguishable. Astrology is the one system of thought which exactly corresponds with this very coming together, for its terms or components are at the same time symbols, psychic realities inside, however intangible, and also objective realities outside, for everybody to see, in the form of the Sun, the Moon and the planets. Jung wrote: "The idea of man as a microcosm, representing in all his parts the earth or universe, is a remnant of an original psychic identity which reflected a twilight state of consciousness". 27 Man however is a microcosm, by correspondences, and that this is not primitive but very real and empirical is demonstrated all the time by astrology. The Zodiac, from Aries, the head, to Pisces, the feet, corresponds in every part to Cosmic Man or the Anthropos, and, as can be ascertained by anyone who studies astrology, this is empirical reality in practice, however impossible according to our established logic and manner of thinking. The only conclusion is that, in spite of Hegel and our intellectual hubris, our conceptual logic and reasoning capacity has not got very far at the present stage, and is more or less bogged down in the mechanical manipulation of matter. Some of our ancestors may have known much more refined and less mechanical ways of manipulating it, for which there is good evidence if we want to see it.
The logic of correspondences, which is non-Aristotelian, is the only kind of logic that will accomodate this situation and apply through different levels of reality - hence the term "vertical thinking". This is the same as saying thinking in terms of time (the vertical fish), or the quality of time; not of time as a linear succession of moments, but as the synchronous relationship of everything within each moment.
REFERENCES- Chapter 2
1. Jung: Psychological Types par. 56.
2. Jung: Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon,par.198 of Vol.13 of CW
(Collected Works), Alchemical Studies.
3. The word "ego" is used here throughout in the sense in which Jung used
it, as the centre of consciousness. For the Ego in the sense usually meant by occultists and by Steiner, as the core of the individuality and the spiritual component, the term "Self", defined by Jung as the totality of the psyche, will
be used here.
4. For the connection between Christ and the "Ichthys, the fish symbol, see Jung: Aion, esp. par.285/286.
5. Psychological Types Chapter Five.
6. Hans Erhard Lauer in "Mozart and Beethoven in the Development of Western Culture", an essay translated and included in Joscelyn Godwin's Cosmic Music, publ. Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont.
7 See later: "Beethoven's Horoscope".
8. This is made clear by him in a little book entitled "Living Music".
9. My source for all such horoscopes is The Circle Book of Charts, compiled
by Stephen Erlewine, and published by The American Federation of Astrologers.
10. See Chapter Six for an explanation of the modes and crosses.
11. We don't know Schiller's Ascendant, and this of course could be in an air sign, further enhancing the split.
12. Jung: Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon, par.210.
13 Jung: Psychological Types par.315.
14. See, for example, Janine Fontaine, La MÉdecine du Corps ƒnergÉtique
Editions Robert Laffont, Paris 1983, referred to in the next chapter. A very striking Western example has also been described recently by Kyriacos Markides in the Cypriot sage and healer who is the subject of his books
The Magus of Strovolus and others.
15. Carlyle, in his essay: "The State of German Literature".
16. These quotations from Jung are from pp. 169-170 of The Structure and
Dynamics of the Psyche.
17. Jung: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology par.300.
18. Rudhyar: Astrology and the Modern Psyche, p.20 (CRCS Publ.)
19. Alan Watts: Psychotherapy East and West, p.4 (Pantheon Books).
20. Astrology and the Modern Psyche p.4. We can note that Darwin was
also an extravert with Epimethean Mercury, although with Sun in
Aquarius and Mercury in Pisces.
21. Psychological Types par. 164.
22 Jung: The Visions of Zosimos, p.81, par. 108 in Alchemical Studies.
23 Wolfgang Döbereiner: Seminars - "Das Gleichnis des Elefanten", Band 1. pp.313/314. Verlag Dobereiner, 1990. Transl. here.
24. Psychology and Alchemy, par.171.
25. Rudolf Steiner: Between Death and Rebirth, Lecture 4. (Rudolf Steiner Press).
26. Thomas Ring: Astrologische Menschenkunde Vol.II p.264. (Transl. here).
27. Jung: Alchemical Studies, The visions of Zosimos, p.92.
28. Keyserling himself tells us that neither the construction of logical sentences nor detailed observation are his strong points, but rather being open to impressions and seeing their significance, gettting at "the true root of things" (the effective truth), and empathising into things, such as different forms of life, different animals - approaches that are characteristic for Cancer and water signs, and might be equally appropriate for a painter. (The Travel Diary of a Philosopher).
PART TWO: NON-ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC
CHAPTER THREE: LEVELS OF REALITY
Taking extraversion as orientation primarily towards space and introversion towards time, we can think of this in terms of dimensions. A full understanding of space and time, of materiality and immateriality, and our whole perception and idea of reality, depends exactly on an understanding of dimensionality, and nobody has attained this with anything like the clarity of P.D. Ouspensky in A New Model of the Universe. The insoluble problems of physics, both old and new, and the contradictions and complications which something like Relativity Theory tries unsuccessfully to resolve, no less than the inexplicability of "supernatural" and occult phenomena, arise equally from the inability to understand the relations of space and time. And this results primarily from the incorrigibly extraverted attitude that has become de rigueur in all thinking, that can see nothing beyond space and matter.
We live in a world of three dimensional space, defined by our perception of matter and objects; but this very perception and awareness of phenomena requires a fourth coordinate, called time. Time is motion, and we measure our world in terms of change or motion. "Three-dimensionality is the function of our senses. Time is the boundary of our senses";1 in astrology the archetype Saturn, as the boundary of the material world.
As a fourth coordinate, or a fourth dimension, time can then be considered as the fourth factor in the quaternity required for wholeness, or in terms of the functions as intuition, the opposite polarity of sensation. It constitutes the perception of the non-spatial, or of a realm beyond that of our ordinary awareness of matter - of the non-material. The symbolism of three and four is a basic theme running through much of Jung's work, and through all the most fundamental expressions of the collective psyche, ancient and modern, through all religions, mythology, folk lore and individual dreams and spontaneous creations. In Psychology and Alchemy Jung quotes (par.209) the axiom of Maria Prophetissa: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the One as the fourth". In alchemy and the unconscious "there is always a vacillation between three and four which comes out over and over again", and "There are always four elements, but often three of them are grouped together, with the fourth in a special position" (ibid par.30). In psychology there are three superior or more or less conscious functions, but the fourth is always inferior, and connected with the unconscious: "the least differentiated or 'inferior' function is so much contaminated with the collective unconscious that, on becoming conscious, it brings up among other things the archetype of the self as well". Four, the quartering of the circle, is needed for wholeness, as exemplified in all forms of mandala symbolism, and :"the uncertainty as to three or four amounts to a wavering between the spiritual and the physical". In our present condition we function on three cylinders as it were, and we are constantly attuned to the three denser elements of matter. This is the three dimensional world of which we are aware. Fire represents the fourth factor, of finer substance and subtler energies, imperceptible to our senses, of the psychic or spiritual world, or the fourth dimension. This is a property of the unconscious, which is not limited by the space and time of our three-dimensional world, as is quite evident in common phenomena of telepathy, clairvoyance or dreaming, and in this higher state of consciousness we have arrived at another reality. It is for the perception of a four dimensional world that we possess four functions, and to expand our consciousness it is this fourth function that needs to be integrated or made conscious.
The fourth dimension is commonly thought of as a higher world of some sort, outside of sense-perception, and the source of much that is inexplicable or seemingly miraculous. Ouspensky in the work to which we have already referred, and which is sub-titled: "Principles of the Psychological Method in its Application to Problems of Science, Religion, and Art", has a chapter devoted to this Fourth Dimension and the various ideas that have existed about it during the last century or so. In this he writes: "The fourth dimension is unknowable. If it exists and if at the same time we cannot know it, it evidently means that something is lacking in our psychic apparatus, in our faculties of perception; in other words, phenomena of the region of the fourth dimension are not reflected in our organs of sense." Later in the development of this subject he writes: "Our relation to the psychic, the difference which exists for us between the physical and the psychic, shows that psychic phenomena should be assigned to the domain of the fourth dimension". The fourth dimension is in fact the realm of the unconscious:
"We may have very good reason for saying that we are ourselves beings of four dimensions and are turned towards the third dimension with only one of our sides, i.e. with only a small part of our being. Only this part lives in three dimensions, and we are conscious only of this part as our body. The greater part of our being lives in the fourth dimension, but we are unconscious of this greater part of ourselves. Or it would be still more true to say that we live in a four dimensional world, but are conscious of ourselves only in a three dimensional world. This means that we live in one kind of condition, but imagine ourselves to be in another." 2
In Relativity Theory the fourth dimension is incorporated into a bundle with the three dimensions of space, called the "space-time continuum", as though it belonged to the same category, as an extraverted fourth geometrical perpendicular, somehow, but incomprehensibly, related to the other three of length, breadth and thickness. Dimensionality however is intrinsically threefold, and is a conventional concept for measuring figures in space. More than three dimensions at once and of the same order are impossible. Since time and space are not of the same order, but in a sense opposites, as inner and outer, the fourth dimension can only be the first dimension of time, and time too must have three dimensions. We are dealing with a different order or level of reality. This is in fact the basis of Ouspensky's New Model, and it affords a far more coherent view of the universe than any that has been so far arrived at in the natural sciences; a view moreover that explains much in their own fields that they cannot explain, as well as taking into account the very much greater area of human experience that they purposely ignore.
The first dimension of time, like that of space, can be thought of as a line, that is the line of before - now - after, or the line of historical time, which is better thought of as parallel lines. "Each moment of time, within certain limits of being and physical existence, contains a definite number of possibilities ... The line of the actualisation of one possibility out of those inherent in each moment is the line of the direction of time, of the fourth dimension", which can best be thought of as a zig-zag. "The perpetual existence of this actualisation, the line perpendicular to the line of time, will be the line of the fifth dimension (or the second of time), the line of eternity." This visualises time as a surface, the Eternal Now.
A rather similar view is put forward much more recently by J. Martin Sorge, Swiss astrologer-scientist: he calls our commonplace world four-dimensional, with uni-dimensional or linear time as one of them, and the next higher world or the "Synoptic Universe", with two dimensions of time, he sees as five-dimensional. 3 Ouspensky is talking about time and space as interchangeable, so that in his fourth dimension what was perceived as time in the 3-dimensional world has become a fourth dimension of space, and the fifth dimension is now perceived as time. "Were our space-sense more perfect in relation to any given object, say to the body of a man, we could embrace all his life in time, from birth to death. Then within the limits of this embrace that life would be for us a constant magnitude". "That which we call a body does not exist in reality. It is only the section of that four-dimensional body that we never see". 4 Jung once expressed exactly the same idea to Barbara Hannah. 5 In the fifth dimension what was successive is now co-existent on a plane. In any case time is movement, or is perceived as movement from a lower dimension. According to Ouspensky animals live in a two-dimensional world, and they perceive our third dimension as movement; in other words they do not have a sense of perspective. We find very much the same idea of time in Lama Govinda: "Change follows a cyclic movement (like the heavenly bodies) representing the eternal in time, and converting time (quasi) into a higher space dimension, in which things and events exist simultaneously, though imperceptible to the senses"; and: "we do not live in time, but time lives in us; because time is the innermost rhythm of our conscious existence, which appears outside of ourselves as space and materialises in the form of our body and its organs".6
Ouspensky's sixth dimension (3rd of time) is the line of the actualisation of all the possibilities contained in each moment. "We are one-dimensional beings in relation to time. Because of this we do not see parallel time or parallel times". For the same reason we do not see angles and turns of time, but see time as a straight line. "General time does not exist, and each separately existing body and separate system has its own time. Separate time is always a completed circle". The fifth dimension is repetetive movement in the circle and recurrence. "The sixth dimension is the way out of the circle", which can be diagramatically represented as the spiral, the pattern of cosmic motion, if seen on a large enough scale. Six-dimensional space is reality, when everything is everywhere and always. (Compare this model with the hologram). In ancient symbolism the six pointed star, the Star of David, represented the world of six dimensions. "But this state of six-dimensional space is incomprehensible to us, for our sense organs and our mind enable us to establish a connection only with the material world, that is, with a world of certain definite limitations in relation to higher space. We can never see a six-pointed star". This is made up of two interwoven triangles, one inverted over the other.
Connected with the inter-relation of space and time, we also have to recognise gradations in matter, and that not all kinds of so-called matter are the same. This is a question of difference of scale, especially time-scale, and what is outside the orbit of perceptibility in our time scale belongs to a different dimension. Thus in "matter" as perceived by our senses there is more space than time (three dimensions of space and one of time). Molecules and electrons have, for us, zero space, and are only perceptible by virtue of their three time dimensions (motion), and are therefore properly immaterial. "It is the greatest mistake to say that tangible matter consists of atoms and electrons. Atoms and molecules cannot be regarded as material particles; they belong to a different space-time ... An electron is much more a time unit than a space unit". The totality of the world consists of intricately interwoven spirals in which everything is interconnected. The world constitutes One Whole. In this picture gravitation becomes unnecessary, and only a term with no intrinsic meaning, used to plaster up something that was never understood. The falling of an apple is connected with something quite different, namely the laws of expansion and contraction (Jupiter and Saturn) towards the centre, which is motion in the fourth dimension, and explains the phenomena of symmetrical growth exhibited by living organisms, and the symmetry of a snowflake. "The line of the fourth dimension is always and everywhere a closed curve, although on the scale of our 3-dimensional perception we do not see either that this line is curved or that it is closed". Eternity is infinite repetition of the circle of time (the 5th dimension), and this is represented by quanta of light. When this is stretched into a spiral it is in the sixth dimension.
All times are relative and different for each observer - even for the same observer at different periods of life, when the rates of metabolism are very different, just as the orbits of the planets are elliptical and their apparent speeds vary accordingly. Time is cyclic and is measured by cycles, and all times depend upon particular life cycles. To see each cycle as a whole - for example to see all the stages of a plant, from seed to seedling to mature plant and flower, at once, and as an organism, rather than successive stages, requires being beyond time, that is being in or able to perceive the fourth dimension or synoptic universe. We can look upon time as a kind of barrier within which we operate; a view from within a particular cycle in relation to other cycles. We judge everything subjectively in terms of our own time measure, or our own speed, which we take as absolute; but different speeds and cycles are only comparable in terms of phases of their cycles. Thus the life-cycle of a gnat is just as long, in its terms, as that of a human being or an elephant, and it is meaningless to measure all times in our particular terms. This has been developed by Rodney Collin in The Theory of Celestial Influence, where he points out, for example, that a gnat, whose lifetime is a single day (for us), lives nearly 30,000 times faster than man, so that "all forms of energy reaching the gnat, measured by vibrations per man's second, will be reduced 30,000 times or about 15 octaves when measured by the gnat's time". One of the many picturesque consequences of this would be that
"If a man stand at the top of his garden and shout at a gnat a hundred yards away, his 'Hullo' will reach it nearly three hours later in a series of seismic shocks lasting eight hours. In fact the man would be the equivalent of 1700 miles away and his shout could only be felt by the gnat, if at all, in the way in which human beings feel a faint earthquake or the eruption of a distant volcano. On such a scale the centre of the Earth is as far from the gnat as the Sun is from us, while the Sun itself becomes almost as remote as the nearest star".
When we speak of different cosmoses, with different dimensions of time, these are incommensurable. The equivalent of one day in the life of man is for a molecule 1/1500 of a second, or for the Sun 200 million years. 7 It is obvious that the expression "light years" is meaningless, since light has no possible relation to the unit "year". It is however of symbolical interest and significance that man is at the mid-point in the spectrum of cosmic scales, the interval between which seems to be in general the product of a factor of about 28,000. Rodney Collin gives examples of these scales or periods as, beyond man, the World of Nature (Life on Earth), the Earth itself, the Sun, the Milky Way; and in the other direction, a blood-cell, a molecule and an electron.
Time for us is measured against the solar system as a system of cycles to which our life corresponds in every particular. Besides our obvious dependence on days, seasons and years, and on life-giving energy from the Sun, the correspondence of all the rhythms of life and all its phases, periods and stages with the cycles of the planets 8, and their equally intimate correspondences with anatomy, physiology and psychology, give astrology a significance and scope beyond that of any other study. The Moon in particular exhibits in its orbit and proportions a series of impossible "coincidences" that defy and contradict not only the standard model of the universe, but "all the laws of logic". 9 The solar system as a whole is a demonstration of the Pythagorean doctrine of World Harmony, as Kepler successfully dedicated his life's work to proving. "The Eccentricities (elliptical orbits) of the individual Planets have their Origin in the Concern for Harmonies between the Planets" (Kepler in his Weltharmonik p.316) 10 Kepler demonstrated the musical intervals defined by the orbits of the planets - "musical laws that he regarded as dispositions of the human soul as well". This last has been proven in 1953 in as much as the proportions of intervals and traditional ordering of music conform to the physical disposition of the human ear 11, and this applies in the psychological realm too. Of the intervals demonstrated by Kepler 30 out of 32 are those that form the major triad; and the same laws of harmony apply everywhere, in crystals, chemistry, acoustics, biology, birdsong, so that all is fashioned according to musical proportions.
"Time is created by rotation about the vital centre of a greater world". 7 Energy incorporated in circular motion becomes matter, or becomes condensed, turning in upon itself, manifesting within time and space. The rings of Saturn are a wondrous demonstration of this whole principle, and that everything is inter-connected and that there is a meaning to everything. Saturn is the key to this mystery, and is Father Time. Saturn as rock is St. Peter, the keeper of the gate, and the Pope, who carries the keys, and great teachers or avatars are commonly born under Capricorn, or at the winter solstice. The symbolism is inexhaustible and interpenetrates all levels, and this is the nature of archetypes. Time is the barrier between our three-dimensional or material world (space) and other realities. It represents our bondage to our own bodies and metabolism, and heaviness, density and mass. When we can transform mass into energy ( ) we can transcend this barrier, and be outside the orbit of Saturn. Uranus symbolises this transformation.
The birth-chart in astrology charts a four-dimensional reality. It is a cross section of time. It is a chart of the higher, non-material energies that constitute or surround an individual, rather than anything to do with the physical body or physical "influences". A second, non-material, or energy body, or double, has always been recognised as part of our reality, and some people can see it, others feel it. Since it has now even been photographed (Kirlian photography) it is no longer open to argument. This surrounding and/or inter-penetrating sheath of finer energies, or electro-magnetic field ("morphogenetic field" - Sheldrake) is often called the aura, or the astral body. Paracelsus calls it the astrum, relating to the stars. In occult teaching this is made up of three "bodies" or layers, consisting of the etheric or formative body, which is also referred to as the life-force, or "Lebensleib" (Steiner); the astral or feeling body, the seat of the emotional life; and the higher spiritual body or "self" (called Ego by Steiner). With the physical body these make a quaternity, or the four bodies of man, corresponding to the four elements and the four functions. Alternatively one can think of four subtle bodies, by adding a mental body. The nomenclature varies in different traditions or teachings, and Steiner divides these up again and adds a higher series. In Paracelsus the four bodies are the four Scaiolae, in which are "nothing of mortality". He calls them in totality the "Aniadus", the second life-force, which is non-material, and is made of the subtle bodies, the corpus astrale. 12 Paracelsus also refers to this as the Light of Nature, and says "what is in the Light of Nature has been brought by the stars". Thus the birth-chart is a map of this corpus astrale or aura, sometimes called the "soul". Jung quotes from the "Tractatus Aristotelis" 13, that the "planets in man" are a more powerful influence than the heavenly bodies; and he was fond of quoting from Origen: "Thou thyself art another world in little, and hath within thee the sun and the moon, and also the stars". 14 The unconscious factors which Jung distinguishes, and his archetypes of the collective unconscious, may be the planetary archetypes in the soul, and his "unconscious", which is a kind of abstraction not further defined nor located anywhere, may be the astrum. The French doctor and anaesthetist Janine Fontaine, who came to discover much about these higher vibrations and became a healer working with and through them, writes in her book "La MÉdecine du Corps ƒnergÉtique": "The outlines of the electro-magnetic body are to be seen in the horoscope of birth. This vibratory skeleton becomes influenced by the transiting planets". In practising this new kind of therapy she found phenomena of various kinds of displacement of the aura, and its dissocation from the physical body, bringing psychic consequences that look very like some of Jung's phenomena of dissociation. She herself draws the conclusion that the "unconscious" is in fact the astrum, or the "corps ÉnergÉtique": "Its skeleton is formed through the position of the stars at the first cry of the newborn. It is the carrier of all the symbolic power of the planets. Its building up follows precise laws, and it remains in connection with the cosmos". 15 The treatise of Poimandres from the Corpus Hermeticum "describes the descent of the Soul, which takes on the psychological qualities of each planet, to varying degrees, as it passes down through the spheres ... Each incarnate being therefore sounds, as it were, a different chord of the planetary or psychological harmonies, and it is this that causes musica humana (the music of the human being) to resemble musica mundana (the music of the worlds or spheres)".16 Of the correspondence of its constitution to planetary vibrations, or vibrations symbolised through the planets, Janine Fontaine relates some very practical experiences. This conclusion in no way invalidates Jung's profound psychological analysis and insights, but rather amplifies them and clarifies many background issues that before faded into obscurity. It also holds the practical promise of much simpler and more direct therapeutic possibilities. The "unconscious" is invisible in the sense of being outside the light of consciousness; but it now acquires a directly perceptible and objective existence, located in space, though still invisible to the ordinary senses, because more rarified than matter. It exists in a different reality, of intangibles, or in a new dimension, outside the physical. This is the "psyche". Jung eventually admitted that "we must completely give up the idea of the psyche's being somehow connected with the brain" 17, and he refers to psychic reality ("soul") as the intermediate world, between matter and spirit 18 - exactly as Janine Fontaine refers to the subtle bodies or aura. 19 Jung speaks of "a projected psychic content, a corpus mysticum in the sense of a 'subtle body'", but in this case it is not a correspondence but a direct perception, and considered as a "psychic content" it is an introjection, but in fact it probably is the psyche. Similarly while he refers to the "magic attributed to gems", it is now found that crystals really do affect the subtle energies.
Since the subtle bodies belong to a different order of reality from the physical or material world perceived by the senses, it is likely that they belong to the three time-dimensions, and are at least related to the three elements or functions without the component of earth or sensation, which corresponds to the physical body.
Symbol And Archetype
In our present stage of development we are only conscious of, or adopt the attitude of being only conscious of the physical or material world, and of ourselves as bodies, and while we use the words "mind", or "personality", and so on, we do not really allow ourselves to believe in anything other than "body". Therefore we confine our awareness to a small part of our total being and reality. We believe mind and personality to arise from and be a more or less accidental function of body, instead of the other way round, where body is a materialisation of the former. Bodies are entirely subject to time, and altogether transient - they do not partake of time, but are confined within its cycle, and this is where we imprison our vision. On our scale this time-cycle and limit is the orbit of Saturn, which marks the stages of human life. Thus Saturn represents the ageing process, and the stages of growth and maturity. To be confined within time is to be incarnated into the material world. Saturn symbolises the process of incarnation into matter, which is subject to time. Incarnation into time (i.e. within time), for cosmic Man (Adam Kadmon) - expulsion from Eden - brought with it the knowledge of good and evil, the descent into the material world of the opposites, for the development of conscious discrimination. One of the first reactions of Adam was to be conscious of himself, to feel naked and ashamed. This is the primary opposition of self and other, or self and the outside world, of within and without. It is the feeling of being an isolated individual surrounded by an alien world of "otherness". Instead of a oneness with God or spirit, and all creation (the garden of Eden), it is a Fall into dualism of self and matter - which requires a conviction that self is something different from matter. It is the separateness of a conscious ego alone in the world, and consciousness entails this opposition, and these are alike attributes of Saturn. Above all it is the separation of inside from outside, of matter and space - our perception of the physical world - from other dimensions of reality.
The way ahead lies in the gradual mending of this split, and the re-uniting of these opposites, in a new ascent of consciousness to higher levels (see Appendix I) This has always been the concern of myth, and of the religions and the arts. Outside the experiences of religious mystics, yogis and initiates, great art is the most general and most direct mediating medium between the worlds; but the intellectual function has for 500 years at least been going the other way. We now have to think in new terms which will make possible a conscious understanding of a greater reality, and of the much larger dimensions and totality of the psyche than we are pleased to acknowledge in our present thinking.
Jung suggests that the tertium non datur, the uniting factor of inner and outer, is the symbol, "that in logic does not exist". Steiner seems to imply the same thing: "Becoming aware of the Idea within reality is the true communion of man". Jung emphasises throughout his works the importance of symbol, and that it is essential for humanity to re-learn to think symbolically. His "archetypes of the collective unconscious" are ultimate symbols, and the unconscious always manifests in symbolic form. Symbol is "the language of the invisible world".
Steiner does not explain exactly what he means by the Idea within reality, and though he never, so far as we know, uses the world symbol, one could describe it this way. The question of a new conceptual framework does not arise for him, and he operates with the old terms, for example "free-will" and so on. When Steiner, doubly a water type (Sun and Ascendant), goes into the realm of pure philosophical concepts he does not formulate ideas clearly. Thus his attempt to classify twelve types of philosophical outlook and fit them to the Zodiac is forced, unconvincing and singularly unrewarding. This weakness is very apparent in his book on Goethe's Weltanschaung, where he is largely talking philosophy rather than occult knowledge.
Symbol is the carrier of meaning - the Idea within reality - and any object of sense-perception can become symbolic. It is a process - symbolism - rather than any particular thing; a process of relationship. It is a perception (intuition) of the macrocosm within the microcosm or a perception of wholeness, and is the language of art; one could say it is the aesthetic experience itself. A concrete sense-perception is the sine qua non, and a form, which sets up the relationship: subject - object - universe. This equation can also be expressed as: feeling - sensation - thinking, or, in music, as melody - tone-colour - form. 20 Such terminology is itself an expression of thinking in correspondences, or symbolic logic. Symbolism in art is the perception of the universal in the particular, and has a strong feeling content, because the individual, through resonance, is directly involved in this relationship. While the opposites are necessary for discrimination and definition and the three-dimensional world of consciousness, the aesthetic experience is the perception of the connections between all phenomena and of wholeness. The one is analytic, the other synthetic. Symbol is the uniting factor between the opposites of the individual (feeling) and the cosmos (thinking), and operates through the object (sensation). Through the thinking function (form in art) ever wider implications and associations are brought in, and a higher meaning is perceived. Such perception is not logical (rational) or allegorical, but intuitive, and arises in the first place from sense-perception. This is empirical symbolism, as directly experienced in art, and it does open the doors of perception to a higher reality. This has not yet been defined or understood in intellectual terms. 17
When however we adapt thinking to this symbolism and reality, we have to adopt a different kind of logic, that of correspondences, and the logic of the extravert material world is no longer valid. The logic to which we are conditioned is Aristotelian and linear, and uni-directional, arguing from "cause" to "effect"; thus it corresponds to our time-sense, and is one-dimensional. The concepts which it manipulates, like chess pieces, are rigid and Saturnian, and correspond to our view of matter. Where matter is the only reality, such fixed and separative terms, immutable and inflexible, seem appropriate, and our minds move along rails in pre-determined mechanical units. The logic of correspondences is by comparison 3-dimensional - that is, it includes other dimensions of reality, and it is multi-level, or applies to any level or context. It is not contrived, but is a new perception of reality, or of a different reality, which is seen in terms of multi-dimensional relationships. These have nothing to do with causality, but very much to do with meaning, and are of the kind perceived by Jung as phenomena of synchronicity - the appearance at the same time, on different levels, of phenomena with the same meaning, and even identical form, but with no possible causal connection, and not statistically attributable to coincidence. Such phenomena are non-Aristotelian, and perfectly in keeping with the new logic. This logic does not preceed in rigid concepts, but is fluid and flexible; it deals in configurations of meaning, that may take many forms, according to the level and context in which they manifest. Such forms become "symbols". But a symbol is a temporary embodiment of a pattern that has no fixed or definitive form - it is rather a nucleus of meaning. Its levels of manifestation inter-penetrate, like the levels of reality. Jung calls such patterns archetypes.
Jung's conception of archetypes seems to be of preformed or a priori structures of meaning, or particular psychic patterns, that carry an instinctive significance or feeling (value) content due to built-in biological and psychological associations, of an unconscious and collective kind. Such would be certain kinds of regularly occurring symbols in dreams, for example a white horse:
"The white horse in our experience has a triple meaning. First, it has embodied in it psychic energy become ghostly, with no more real relationship to the natural earth, to which the dreamer, who himself lacks a genuine sense of reality, should give serious thought. Secondly, it can also symbolise a very spiritual, creative force, earthbound it is true, but close to the archetype of Pegasus, of the poetical steed. In the third place, the white horse, and he who sits upon him as rider, is fatally connected with death." 21
Black horses on the other hand are wholly negative and destructive symbols which have to do with death. This kind of symbol or archetypal embodiment is regularly connected with those that occur in mythologies and ancient traditions, and is unconscious and collective. Symbolism in art however is much more general and any object or pattern whatever can be invested as a symbol. Often archetypal symbols like the above are constellated in art - art is a kind of dream or "active imagination", in which the unconscious plays a leading part. 22 More often, whatever is in front of the artist can be turned into a symbol, or a means of symbolic relationship. In a still-life particular objects can be used for their associations; and/or their pattern and arrangement can be very suggestive, and their relation to one another; and they may carry the symbolism of colour, and of light and shade and reflections in their infinite nuances. The same is demonstrated in poetry, most explicitly by someone like MallarmÉ, who sets out from any object that happens to be under his eye at the right moment, even the whiteness and sterility of the blank sheet of paper. It is seeing things"sub specie aeternitatis" as Jung says; or in other words anything seen in the fourth dimension can have implications of eternity. In music the process is not so obvious, as music does not apparently relate to the outer world and seems to consist of patterns of tones and inner feelings existing in a kind of vacuum, relating to nothing. And this is what "musicologists" would have us believe. In reality the symbolism in music is every bit as concrete as in any other form of art, or more so. The medium itself of musical sound has a much more direct and physical effect than sight or words, and it is a much more direct and powerful medium for the expression of feelings. Its means of symbolic association, while not directly pictorial, include possibilities of powerful suggestive effects, and sound patterns and rhythms which, since rhythmic movement is the chief characteristic of life, come much nearer home than the relatively indirect or static rhythms of the other arts. Strongly marked melodic motives and rhythmic patterns can be in fact much more vividly suggestive, in a directly concrete way, than pictorial effects, and while constituting movement in time, they can and do produce obvious visual associations of movement in space as well. 23 In place of visual colour we have the wealth of possibilites of tone-colour arising from instrumental and harmonic combinations, while melodic line replaces line in drawing. In short, music is much more in the time dimension than the other arts. Its patterns (melodies or motifs) come nearer to representing pure ideas or thought-forms, and, with their feeling content (expression of values) often amount to a direct insight into another dimension or a higher world.
Such patterns that are the language of artistic symbolism no doubt ultimately link up with, or constellate, archetypal patterns that exist in the realm of pure ideas (or the "collective unconscious"). These may be in their most fundamental aspect geometrical forms and cosmic proportions (the harmonies of the spheres), and intimately connected with those manifested in musical scales and the overtone series. "Toward the end of his life Jung saw in natural numbers the most primitive element of the 'spirit' and thought that they might be the 'key impulse' underlying archetypal images". 24 More differentiated archetypes constitute forms or ideas; they can be considered as vortices of energy. They are forms that relate to the whole cosmos, and so are means of understanding particulars in terms of the whole; thus they are universals. They are not the same as Plato's Forms, though one would like to think so; from Plato's descriptions his Forms sound like intellectual abstractions - thus Beauty, Ugliness, Goodness, Justice, though the Sun, which he equates with the Good, is a real archetype. Psychological archetypes as understood by Jung are patterns built in to the collective psyche which can be constellated as images or external perceptions, and then always have a strong feeling or affect content. They are not conscious intellectual abstractions. They are Ideas, but have a potent psychic reality.
Archetypes are often defined as "instinctive behaviour patterns", and while it is true that Jung himself has used this term, it is hard to see how "the self", or a lotus flower, or a vulture, can constitute a "behaviour pattern", and it is not among his most felicitous definitions. "Thought pattern" is a more realistic term, and "instinctive" is also open to question. Jung made many definitions of archetypes, modifying his views as he went along, and the whole subject is obscure and elusive, as he pointed out himself, since whatever they are, they are unconscious and cannot be known or defined. He refers to them variously as the primordial forms of ideas, 25 "inherited possibilities of ideas", as genuine symbols because they cannot be exhaustively interpreted, and "indescribable because of their wealth of reference, although in themselves recognisable", and "their manifold meaning". "An archetype in its quiescent, unprojected state, has no exactly determinable form but is in itself an indefinite structure which can assume definite form only in projection". 26 He describes them as forms without content, and comparable to Plato's eternal ideas; archetypal representations (images and ideas) are not archetypes as such, "which point back to one 'irrepresentable' basic form. The latter is characterised by certain formal elements and by certain fundamental meanings, although these can be grasped only approximately". 27 The representations are compared to variations on a ground theme. All this sounds remarkably like certain astrological symbols. Jung distinguishes two kinds of archetypes, those that can be experienced in personified form, such as the anima and animus, the shadow, or the wise old man - and those that he calls "archetypes of transformation", which appear to be pure symbols. He does not enlarge on this distinction, but it seems to be an important one. The personified archetypes are few in number, and Jung devotes much more space to them individually than to the other kinds, except for the Self; there is a radical difference. It seems that these represent actual parts of the psyche and not just motifs or symbols, and that it is these that it is possible to equate astrologically with the planets. Since they carry a very strong affect content they are forces (WesenskrÖfte)28.
There is a large class of psychological archetypes that are theriomorphic, that take the forms of animals, because they represent qualities attributed to particular animals; thus horses, bulls, the serpent, the fox, the dove. Some of these relate to signs of the Zodiac, or archetypal qualities, and refer to the physical nature and instincts (animals generally), wisdom, cunning, the spirit (associated with air or wind, as pneuma). This is something different from the personified archetypes which seem to represent more basic and essential components of the psyche itself, and which determine its integrated function as an individual and as a part of society. The most fundamental of these are the father and mother principles, which are essential formative factors in the psychological development of the child. After these the most clearly differentiated are the anima and animus, which again refer to the components of gender, but this time in a contrasexual sense; that is, the anima is peculiar to the masculine psyche as its unconscious feminine half, as the animus is the unconscious masculine side of the feminine psyche. Jung has written much about these two factors, and they are universal as mythological figures. They seem to be inverse forms of the father and mother principles, which become factors in the psychology of adults rather than of children. Since they are closely connected with the concept "soul" they must also be connected with the astrum, or subtle bodies. They are conceived of by Jung as components of the collective unconscious, and as mediators between this and the conscious mind; they can be the guides for the conscious ego in a journey through the underworld like that of Dante. The purpose of this journey is integration of the totality of the psyche, or of the ego with the Self, so that the guides play a very important role in the transcendent function, mediating between the conscious personality and the spirit, or leading us to God. Compared with this, others of the personifiable archetypes must be either secondary or derivatives of these essential four. A figure like the Terrible Mother is evidently a dark mother figure, or the mother function turned negative and destructive, as the Shadow is the dark side of the conscious ego: "The personal unconscious is the shadow and the inferior function", 29 and again: "the inferior function is practically identical with the dark side of the human personality". 30 The Shadow does not qualify as an archetypal figure, which should belong to the collective unconscious and be a constellation of some basic human motivation. The Kore seems to be another form of Luna, or mother figure, perhaps merging with anima, and the Wise Old Man may be a form of father figure, as a teacher and instructor in form, like Saturn, and such archetypes tend not to have very distinct boundaries, but often merge into one another or change shape like Proteus.
The contents of the unconscious are not, like conscious contents, clearly differentiated, and
"are mutually contaminated to such a degree that they easily take one another's place, as can be seen most clearly in dreams. The indistinguishableness of its contents gives one the impression that everything is connected with everything else .... The only comparatively clear contents consist of motifs or types round which individual associations congregate .... These archetypes are of great stability and so distinct that they allow themselves to be personified and named, even though .. certain of their qualities can be interchanged". 31
This again reads like a description of the planetary archetypes, and the strong feeling-tone associated with the former is comparable to the compulsive (or impulsive) character of the latter. The most important forms crystallise in mythologies, and remain recognisably recurrent throughout history. They are probably best designated in psychological terms as functions, and taken in a different category from archetypes generally. These latter have never been clearly sorted out, and range from symbols with strong collective and historical asociations with the above essential functions, and hence with strong feeling or affect content which can be more or less unconscious - to spontaneous symbols which arise from the same process as the aesthetic one. It is doubtful to what extent the words "symbol" and "archetype" are identical in meaning, and it may be that more differentiation is needed. It may be that "archetype" refers to a higher level of inclusiveness - that is, less differentiated, closer to Unity, as though higher on the involutionary scale or the harmonic series. While the personified psychic components discussed above are very suggestive of planetary and astrological ones, and these in turn have formerly been personified mythical gods, they should perhaps be designated as functional principles, since we already have the term "function" for feeling, thinking, sensation and intuition. The planets and signs in astrology are more differentiated aspects of these basic four: feeling is a product of Moon and Venus, with Mars as outcome, and in a higher transcendent sense is represented by Neptune; thinking by Mercury and Jupiter, and ultimately Uranus; sensation by Venus and Saturn; intuition probably by the three transcendent planets (trans-Saturnian) together, with Jupiter playing a part. The term archetype might best be reserved for the proportions and harmonies that prevail in the realm of essential thought-forms, or the fifth dimension. Everything in between, such as the white horse, could come into the category of symbol. The Self, as spirit, the centre, the One, or God, does not come into any of these categories, though there are many symbols that allude to it.
The question of where archetypes come from and what they objectively are is not really answered by Jung. He writes: "...libido creates the god image by making use of archetypal patterns...Man worships the psychic force active within him as something divine... The God-image is a real but subjective phenomenon". 33 This libido can also be considered as spirit, pneuma, prana; or orgone energy, etheric force or cosmic energy. From a subjective view it is rather far-fetched to suggest that this libido creates the Sun, the Moon and the planets; it must rather be the other way round. Elsewhere Jung describes the unconscious as "reality in potentia - the ground plan lying dormant in an individual from the beginning..." 34 This is a description of the horoscope; but the horoscope represents a cross-section of planetary time, and a particular pattern and ground plan of functional principles determined by the place and time of birth, and not by some kind of inherited and pre-existing biological and/or psychological substratum. The latter is a kind of scientific mysticism resulting in this case from a desire to avoid what is popularly regarded as mystical, but is in reality far more empirical. The concrete way in which this ground plan manifests or becomes realised depends of course on the kind of being that embodies it and the conditions in which it operates. Jung puts it: "On the one hand, energy (libido) creates its own image, and on the other the character of the medium forces it into a definite form," 35 or we have "the causal nexus of the environment" versus "the spontaneity of psychic experience." In the case of a human being born in a particular historical, national and social environment, it depends upon the individual's level of psychological development or degree of consciousness, both before and after birth. Except in the case of twins all are born with individual patterns, but all, including twins, come with previous experience, and are neither blank sheets nor blueprints of a collective psyche. They have to work out their individual patterns as representatives of humanity as a whole in the given conditions, and according to their individual level of consciousness.
The ground plan or pattern of each individual is made up of the same functional principles (from a psychological point of view) or planets, in different relationship to one another (angular and geometrical), and operating in different tones, as it were (signs of the Zodiac), and areas of life (astrological houses), making up an individual chord of planetary harmony, a mixture of consonance and dissonance, or perhaps the musical score of an individual life or symphony. This is a ground plan of the individual character, or fate (karma), which is the same thing ("character is destiny"). In experiments of entering into a different state of consciousness, Ouspensky saw that a person's life does not consist of events which arbitrarily happen to him, but that the life is he, his features, as a whole, or he is his life, and no-one can change it, any more than one can change the features of his face. "Each has his own fate, in which another man may occupy a certain place, but in which he can change nothing." This is the long body of life, the Linga Sharira. 36 We do not see the whole of his being, but only moments and cross-sections in succession, and therefore to think of his life in terms of "predetermination" does not mean any more than applying this concept to his face.
If we refer to the features of a person's life or fate as functional principles, these are comparable to nose, mouth, ears, eyes and so on, and he is born with them as they are. This is the empirical or psychological view of such features. In another view they are represented by the planets.
Ouspensky describes an experience of being able to see, in a special state of consciousness, the ultimate unity of everything, "From above" (from the First Principle) "goes the process of differentiation, and from below goes the process of integration". At a certain stage, "great numbers of very varied phenomena are actually bound into wholes and can be expressed by one sign or hieroglyph. A series of these hieroglyphs represents life or the visible world at a certain distance from the surface....transformed into principles extraordinarily rich in meaning". 38 He is referring to the realm of the archetypes, the world of ideas or thought-forms, perhaps the fifth dimension. "To a modern mind ideas are an abstraction from facts; in our eyes ideas have no existence of themselves...For us 'facts', which do not exist, are real, and ideas, which alone exist, are unreal". 39 On the new level of reality which we are considering, ideas or thought-forms are more real than matter, and precede material forms, which are only temporary condensations of higher energies.
There have been many approaches to a higher energy over the last two centuries on an experimental and scientific basis, from Mesmer (1766) on, and it has been named "animal magnetism", "the life force", and more recently "orgone energy" by Wilhelm Reich, who got further than anyone else in such researches and in their practical application in healing, and even weather-changing. Paul Kammerer, the Austrian biologist, had postulated the existence of a "formative energy", while Reich proved that living matter (bions) and organisms (protozoa) are actually formed out of the non-living by this energy. He observed the appearance of "bions" out of water and sand, simply by the condensation of "orgone" energy, or etheric force. This energy is everywhere: "Ocean sand is nothing more than solidified solar energy". He thus demonstrated biogenesis, the transition between non-motility and pulsation, or living units.
In ancient China this energy was known as ch'i: "When one knows that the Great Void is full of ch'i, one realises that there is no such thing as nothingness"; and: "When the ch'i condenses, its visibility becomes apparent". 40 Modern physics has come to the same point: "The presence of matter is merely a disturbance of the perfect state of the field at that place". Quantum physics, or metaphysics, talks of "patterns of probability" - a phrase that exactly describes an astrological chart. Such patterns are said to be wrinkles on the face of the world, having no independent duration; as ripples, or waves. Effects depending perhaps on a higher plane of reality, or higher worlds. "Sub-atomic particles are dynamic patterns which have a space aspect and a time aspect". 40 They are not isolated objects, but occurrences, or events (processes); there are no independent particles, only their interactions, or relationships. We are in a world of effects without causes - a non-Aristotelian world requiring a fundamental revolution in thinking.
The three-dimensional world as we know it is a transitory materialisation of patterns of higher energies, thought-forms or patterns of meaning, and these are the more stable and the more "real". This same view has been proposed in physics by the English physicist David Bohm, who perceives an implicate order in the universe, transcending the explicate order or our usual frame of reference. This is an a-causal order, and implies that every part of the universe contains the whole. "Implicate order is a level of order not perceivable by the senses or by any physical apparatus ... What we see is the explicate order - specific forms which are generated from the underlying implicate order. Ultimately, concludes Bohm, the entire universe has to be understood as a single undivided whole in which separate and independent parts have no fundamental status". 41 This fits Jung's synchronicity, and also the Hermetic doctrine "as above, so below". It means that physics has arrived at the idea of correspondences. A closely-related concept has been put forward in biology by Rupert Sheldrake, in the form of his "morphogenetic field", which seems to be another name for the esoteric "etheric body", which precedes and is the formative agent of the physical body and interpenetrates it. The Buddhist teaching of "mind only" is becoming our very latest and most modern idea, and the physicist "probing the deepest levels of objective existence" is converging with the mystic, "probing the deepest levels of subjective existence". 42
Ouspensky describes further: "a world in which everything is inter-connected, in which nothing exists separately and in which at the same time the relations between things have a real existence apart from the things themselves; or possibly 'things' do not even exist and only relations exist." Everything is seen as designs built out of basic motifs (archetypes). There were dead ideas (intellectual abstractions, e.g. justice and injustice) and living ideas, e.g. the triad and the four elements, which enter into everything. "In fact almost all the usual ideas and concepts by which people live proved to be non-existent" - such concepts are called by Korzybski 43 "spell-noises", i.e. sounds which can be spelled but are meaningless and correspond to no reality.
"With great amazement I became convinced that only a very small number of ideas corresponds to real facts, that is, actually exists. We live in an entirely unreal, fictitions world, we argue about non-existent ideas, we pursue non-existent aims, invent everything, even ourselves." 38
He found "the complete absence of anything that could be expressed in the language of ordinary concepts" and "the real world was a world without forms". While experiencing this, and seeking a formula for entry to that other world, he received the message: "Think in other categories". Compare: "We shall change over into this invisible world, in which Symbol creates an order". 15
We find a very similar vision expressed in this quotation from Harnack on Origen: "All material things (through spiritual interpretation) seem to be melted into a cosmos of ideas". 44 This is a flowing world of interchangeable forms. That is, the real world of ideas, or symbols, or archetypes, does not itself consist of definite forms, but can crystallise on the material level into corresponding forms which express the same pattern or relationship, in any guise. This is Ouspensky's fifth dimension, of possibilities, and the realm of the archetypes. It is also described by Steiner: "All these possibilities which do not become reality on the physical plane exist as forces and effects behind the physical world in the spiritual world and reverberate through it." We are living in a world of possibilities "surrounding us like a cosmic aura....Forces which converge, but have been displaced in a certain way, so that they do not manifest on the physical plane." (Displaced by our karma, which chooses only one among the possibilities.) 45
We can consider the idea or archetype as a pattern of meaning, that is, a relationship, and this can materialise - be manifested in the material world or in 3-dimensional space - in any temporarily appropriate form or in any terms, or on any level, the important thing, and the "reality", being the idea-pattern, and not the particular concretization at any given moment. The meaning - the relationship - is real or important rather than the thing, which is transitory, and in any case only an appearance. This means thinking in symbols, or being aware of meaning, for symbols are exactly patterns of relationship. Ultimately, it means perceiving everything as meaningful, instead of as unrelated and haphazard "Brownian movement". Once we re-learn to perceive things symbolically, or re-awaken intuition, "apprehension by means of the archetype", the world can only be magically transformed for us, and everything acquires meaning in relation to the whole. Our perceptions are not only enormously heightened, but all values are completely reorientated (Nietzsche's re-valuation of all values). Though this may be compared with an earlier stage of primitive "magical" cultures, we are now on a vastly more conscious level, and it is not necessary to give up any of the painfully acquired advances in consciousness that have been made in the past millenium; only, having developed a high degree of discrimination in particulars, we are now in a position to understand these particulars in relation to the whole, and to synthesise.
A synthesis is also possible between the extravert and introvert points of view, since the archetype or idea is both inside and outside, and is the basis of everything. It makes no difference whether we are projecting an inner content or perceiving an objective phenomenon, because both these phases are necessary. Perhaps the two major and most relevant spiritual teachers of our time, who are specifically Western and represent and are the culmination of Western traditions, both philosophic and esoteric, are C.G. Jung and Rudolf Steiner. As we have seen, these represent the opposite polarities of the question, the introvert and extravert approach on a spiritual level. We might compare the two approaches with different kinds of art. Art that is epical presents a grand vista, a view over a wide horizon, in terms of universals - for example many folk epics, or the symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner or Sibelius; in painting, Turner. The emphasis is on the inner world, of forms and ideas; this is Promethean. If on the other hand we take an impressionist painter, as extreme and most transcendent example let us take Monet and "Les NymphÉas", this is exactly what Steiner is advocating, and rather than surveying a panorama of space or time, this is penetrating into another dimension in the here and now, and through the immediate sense-world outside. Some people can see visions, or see subtler forms and energies, outside us. In this case we are approaching from the particular to the universal, or arguing to universals; in the first case the other way round, but they are two different approaches to the same end. Or, put another way, with Monet we are arriving at a higher reality through the feeling dimension (the astral, or Neptunian, which is also the world of colour), rather than through the thinking function (form and concepts, even if of a higher order than the common currency, and consisting of symbols or universals). Intuition is of course very much in evidence in both cases. It is precisely these two different approaches that are represented by Steiner and Jung. We must develop both in order to evolve, for they are complementary. The objective psychological functions, sensation and intuition, are in a sense conditions for the other two - i.e. sensation goes with and is a condition for feeling (both symbolised by Venus), while intuition is the faculty whereby we understand symbols, and the condition for a higher form of thinking and the understanding of higher concepts (symbolised by Jupiter).
If we carry this a stage further, into the psychic, it is here that the real dilemma begins, for we have to choose between a "spirit world", peopled by objective entities and beings outside us, and the "unconscious", which manufactures all kinds of phantasmagoria, which we either see in dreams or visions, or actually project into the outside world and behold them there as in a mirror. Are we to look to "spirit guides" or to personified unconscious contents? The first of these is the way the psychic is understood by an extraverted occultist, while the second is obviously the introverted, "psychological" explanation. In both cases what is being referred to are archetypal or transcendent factors that can be represented as a hierarchy of forms, and that are both inside and out, like the Sun and Moon. They belong to something larger than the conscious ego, and transcend the individual. They cannot be represented in terms of the 3-dimensional world, and in so far as they are pictured in the same terms they are projections, or translations into familiar forms and concepts, just as dreams translate messages from another dimension into everyday language or allegories.
We are confronted with a similar dilemma when considering myths, archetypal figures or stories that to a greater or lesser extent become represented as history. The great mythologies are associated with religions and constellate archetypes of a fundamental kind, as gods, corresponding to principles at the planetary level, and heroes, where there is human or semi-human participation. These are myths of whole cultural epochs, as distinct from the more localised and national folk-epics, legends and fairy-tales. The extravert-introvert debate here centres on questions of the historicity and concretization of myths and heroes, and whether they are to be taken literally and as events and individual persons, or as teachings in parables and on the symbolic level. The power of myths comes from their embodiment of archetypes or psychic forces, that is from their meaning, not from their historicity, which, relatively speaking, seems a matter of indifference. In the world of forms, everything is contained in everything else. Since the forms or archetypes are the primary reality, they are not dependent on their concrete manifestations, but the other way round, and the material forms are crystallisations of ideas. For Western extravert culture historicity is everything, it attaches significance only to "facts".
In his "Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower" Jung writes "..we must emphasise the difference between East and West in their treatment of the 'jewel', the central symbol. The West lays stress on the human incarnation, and even on the personality and historicity of Christ, whereas the East says: 'Without beginning, without end, without past, without future'". 46 The tremendous significance of the Gospel Story comes from its standing as a mythos, from its profound symbolism and archetypal meaning. The death and dismemberment of the God (or division into four, or crucifixion) is a theme of universal recurrence, from Osiris to Dionysos. That the god is the Self is made especially explicit in Christianity - Christos, a collective term for the self; while Nazarios (the Nazarene) means separation, alienated from other men, 47 which is the inevitable result of being true to the Self (or God, or reality). This means the rejection of mundane values (temptation in the wilderness) and adherence to the inner reality - "My kingdom is not of this world" but "is within you". He who follows this rule is always "despised and rejected of men"; it means a sacrifice of success in this world, because one cannot worship both God and Mammon (which means choosing between reality and one's ego-status). This implies isolation and crucifixion to some extent - the spirit nailed to the cross of matter, all symbolised by Saturn. It means the "Crowning with Thorns", and persecution by the wicked and the clowns, because of rejecting their values, vividly represented in the triptych by Bosch on that subject; and carrying one's own cross, or taking responsibility for one's life. The Self is the pearl of great price, thrown on the dunghill, or the treasure in the deep, the jewel in the lotus. It is above all the fish symbol, to be sought in the waters of the unconscious. This also is of great antiquity, from Babylon (Oannes, the fish-god), or the man-fish, a form of Vishnu, the first avatar, 47 and there is a relation between "Christ" and "Ichthys", meaning fish. Jung goes into this in "Aion", and the astrological parallels to Christian symbolism, and its relevance to the Piscean Age. Many of these are obvious, with the twelve apostles and the four evangelists, the parable of the loaves and the two fishes (the Virgo-Pisces axis). The sign Virgo is of course the harvest sign and the astrological Virgin carries a sheaf of corn. The Christian cult of the Virgin as the mother of Christ is more explicitly related to the opposite sign of Pisces in symbolising the ocean which nurtures the fish, and in her very name of Mare, the sea, or the Star of the Sea.
All these themes, such as virgin birth, common in mythology, are an integral part of the whole teaching constituting the gospel story, and to put emphasis upon its historicity is to detract from its truth. Myths are more real and powerful than facts; and a literal understanding leads to misinterpretation and unintelligibility, to missing a great deal of the point. Only on this level can such misconceptions arise as the idea of personal sacrifice as vicarious atonement, which makes an absurdity of the whole story. Vicarious atonement would mean carryng our cross for us, which is just the opposite of the real meaning of taking responsibility for our own lives. It puts the whole thing onto the level of something like motor-insurance. While taking everything literally, such as virgin birth, at once obscures the real issues. Mistaking things for "real" in the popular sense puts them all into a context of unreality, so that a primitive kind of belief has to be required of the listener, rather than understanding. To take the Gospel as a factual story of events in the past rather than as a teaching of truths applying in the present is really a form not only of unconsciousness but even of blasphemy. In continuation of the passage cited above, Jung wrote: "The Christian subordinates himself to the superior divine person in expectation of grace; but the Oriental knows that redemption depends on the work he does on himself". To see Christ as an archetype of the Self at once illumines the whole story and makes every detail full of meaning in terms of this work, for every individual in the present. The Self and God are one. God is not so much a constituent of the psyche as one with it, and in fact "God" means "oneness", while the name of God is a quaternity, the Tetragrammaton. The Christian mythos made explicit a constellation of meaning ushering in a new astrological age and historical epoch, the threshold of the development of individual consciousness.
On the other hand Jung is careful to emphasise that understanding it as a mythos does not negate the historicity of the gospel story: "The fact that the life of Christ is largely myth does absolutely nothing to disprove its factual truth - quite the contrary. I would even go so far as to say that the mythical character of a life is just what expresses its universal human validity". 48 Steiner puts great stress on the extraverted view of the importance of regarding it as an historical event. At the same time he shows that it is necessary to understand it in an occult or esoteric sense, and gives it a new and very meaningful interpretation. There is no reason why archetypal constellations should not crystallise into corresponding events, as in any ordinary case of synchronicity. It would be better perhaps to think that this is to some extent inevitable, even though the meaning and the superior reality does not depend on this. The concretization brings it into forms and may have been necessary at the time, while it is in later times that the value of a great teaching depends less upon a belief in the historical existence of a particular founder. This is true for any archetype, and the further any hero representing it recedes into the past the less relevant does such a belief become, without in any way lessening the power of the archetype. To what extent the Buddha or the Christ once existed in bodily form does not affect their teaching, nor their spiritual reality. Steiner even insisted that figures like Prometheus did once exist as individuals; there is no doubt however that such mythologems or constellations of meaning can be reincarnated in bodily form, or that historical figures can correspond to them. Jung says, in continuation of the above quotation: "It is perfectly possible, psychologically, for the unconscious or an archetype to take complete possession of a man and to determine his fate down to the smallest detail. At the same time objective, non-psychic parallel phenomena can occur which also represent the archetype. It not only seems so, it simply is so, that the archetype fulfills itself not only psychically in the individual, but objectively outside the individual". 48 A perfect example of this is Beethoven, who embodied the myth of Prometheus. We see here the manifestation of a higher reality quite outside the Aristotelian world of linear causality and 3-dimensional space, and quite in keeping with the idea of a higher or divine intervention in temporal affairs. A vital archetype is constellated in events, or gods descend into matter, are incarnated on earth.
Astrology shows the significance as myth of the events in everyone's lives, or the unfoldment of universal patterns. Thus the real significance of anything depends upon the extent to which it can be seen as myth. This is why astrology is the science of meaning. Observations of the synchronicity of astrological phenomena with events in life are not valuable because they can be of "use", but because they make us aware of the relatedness of everything. They are for raising consciousness. Here myth and concrete events are shown to be one, since the ultimate pattern is embodied in astronomical events.
History is myth, or myths continually manifest in history. Myth is the reality behind the event, and myths are spelled out in events, unceasingly, as outward manifestations of the implicate order.
REFERENCES- Chapter 3
1 P.D. Ouspensky: A New Model of the Universe, p.373.
In the volume of studies collected under this general title we are
concerned here with Chapter X, which has particularly this title, and also with Chapter II, headed "The Fourth Dimension". Most of the following quotations are taken from the former.
2 Ibid: "The Fourth Dimension", p.86.
3 J. Martin Sorge: Transzendente Astrologie, (Ariston Verlag, Genf. 1981).
4 Ouspensky: Tertium Organum, p.227.
5 Barbara Hannah: Active Imagination, (Sigo Press 1981) p.26.
6 Lama Govinda: Multidimensional Meditation.
7 For a full exposition of this theme see Ch.II of the work cited: The
Theory of Celestial Influence, (Shambhala, 1984). Collin was a pupil of Ouspensky, and continued the development of the latter's thinking on this subject where he left off.
8 An exposition of this in great detail is given by Alexander Ruperti
in Cycles of Becoming (CRCS Publications, Vancouver, Washington, 1978).
9 V. de Callotay: Atlas of the Moon, quoted by N. Kollerstrom in the Astrological Journal of Winter 1982.
10 Rudolf Haase in "Kepler's World Harmony and its Significance for
Us Today", included in Prof. Joscelyn Godwin's Cosmic Music, and from which also the following data on Kepler are cited.
11 H. Husman: Vom Wesen der Konsonanz (Heidelberg 1953), cited by Haase, p.124.
12 Jung: Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon, pars. 198, 210.
13 An old alchemical tract from a collection known as the Theatrum Chemicum.
14 Jung: Mysterium Conjunctionis, footnote p.8, Origen.
15 Janine Fontaine: La MÉdecine du Corps ƒnergÉtique, (Edition Robert Laffont, Paris 1983).
16 Joscelyn Godwin: Music, Mysticism and Magic: A Source Book (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1986).
17 Jung: Synchronicity, C.W. Vol. 8, p.505, par.947.
18 Jung: Alchemical Studies, par.76 footnote.
19 In Mysterium Conjunctionis Jung even says: "It may be a prejudice
to restrict the psyche to 'inside the body'...there may be a psychic 'outside the body'" (p.300). In the same work he compares the psyche to the solar system: "..the psyche is not a unity but a 'constellation' consisting of other luminaries besides the Sun" (par.502).
20 An exact explanation of this will be found in my essay "The Three
Dimensions of Music", yet to be published.
21 Ernst Aeppli: Der Traum und Seine Deutung (Dreams and their Meaning)
(Eugen Reutsch Verlag, ZÜrich 1943). (Translated here).
22 See particularly for example the painting by Jack B. Yeats "There is
No Night" (at the Hugh Lane Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin) in which this very white horse is the central theme.
23 This has been extensively analysed by Arnold Schering, Albert
Schweitzer and Pirro in Bach's music, and an article concerning the first of these authors by the present writer was published in the Music Review, Feb. 1947, and on symbolism generally in music in the issues of the same journal of Aug.-Nov. 1982, and Feb. 1984.
24 Marie-Louise von Franz in: C.G. Jung - His Myth in Our Time p.126.
25 Jung: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious par. 69. (C.W.IX).
26 Ibid. p.70.
27 Jung: On the Nature of the Psyche, par.417. (C.W. Vol.8).
28 The word by which Thomas Ring designates the planets in
astrology.
29 Jung: Myst.Conj. par.257.
30 Jung: Concerning Rebirth, par. 22, from Archetypes .
31 Jung: Myst.Conj. par.660.
32 Marie-Louise von Franz, op.cit. p.126.
33 Jung: Symbols of Transformation p.86 (C.W. Vol.V).
34 Jung: C.W. Vol. IX, par. 498.
35 Jung: C.W. Vol.V (Symbols of Trans.) p.86.
36 Ouspensky, New Model, p.301.
37 Jung: Symbols of Trans. p.89.
38 Ouspensky: New Model p. 303, "An Experiment in Mysticism"; and (b) p.296.
39 Ouspensky: New Model p.122, "Superman".
40 Fritjof Capra: The Tao of Physics,
41 Quoted from Peter Russell: The Awakening Earth (Ark Paperback 1984).
42 Ibid.
43 For a thorough treatise on the general misuse of language and the
fatal consequences thereof, and on the fundamental importance of semantics, see Alfred Korzybski: Science and Sanity, (Institute of General Semantics, Lakeville, Conn. 1933).
44 Jung: Psychological Types, p.15.
45 Rudolf Steiner: Between Death and Rebirth, p.62. (R.S. Press).
46 Jung: Alchemical Studies, par. 80.
47 H.P. Blavatsky: Isis Unveiled, Vol. II.
48 Jung: Answer to Job, p.76 (Ark Paperback).
49 Fritjof Capra: The Tao of Physics, p. 225, quoting Walter Thirring.
50 Ibid.
CHAPTER FOUR
"THINK IN OTHER CATEGORIES"
Thinking and feeling are the evaluating functions and represent the orientation of the individual. Their correct functioning, that they shall not be wrongly applied or disconnected from reality (neurotic, or insane), depends upon their being firmly grounded in sensation-intuition; or the whole quaternity has to be developed and synchronized. In our extravert civilisation it is generally intuition that is lacking, or suppressed, so that feeling and thinking are centred on the material world in itself, without its other polarity, and we are short-circuited and disorientated, with no connection to the higher reality of the whole. We have descended into dense matter to the limit. Thinking has become imprisoned in it, as though in a bottle, to develop analytical discrimination (Virgo). This process is represented by the number four, the cross of matter, the number of Saturn. In alchemy the uroborus serpent, which is circular (time), is sacrificed in matter and divided into four elements; the idea of dismembering is recurrent, dividing into four to create order (structure), or discrimination. 1 According to Steiner, "four is the sign of the cosmos or of creation", by which he must mean differentiation. The curve has to ascend again towards the spiritual (the fifth round), with the renewal of intuition; but in retaining what has been gained in analytical thinking. Crucifixion in matter must not have been for nothing. This means that thinking itself must not be discarded in a return to pure feeling, in a pre-Piscean context, but must change to an intuitive level. It has to be integrated with intuition, without losing in discriminative and differential development. This means a fundamental change in conceptual language and epistemology; a jump into a different orbit, in a less material context, where its terms are orientated to a different reality.
Thinking, moreover, in the Virgo-Pisces age (Virgo here standing for material and analytical thinking) has developed in opposition to feeling, and at present there is a very real split between the terms of this polarity, with each half tending to go off by itself and renounce the other -"the duality into which Christianity inevitably leads" (Jung). Feeling is naturally more orientated towards the unconscious, towards the feminine (lunar) and instinctive side, while thinking by itself tends towards the masculine and objectively conscious. In reaction against inhuman (unfeeling) materialism and mendacity, the fringe popularity of Eastern and pre-Piscean religious philosophies tends to swing back to the purely devotional or Neptunian (undifferentiated feeling), with a loss of individual and discriminative consciousness. It is very important in this respect to distinguish between the separative ego, which is confined to 3-dimensional consciousness and Cartesian dualism (the I versus the rest of the world), and the real individuality or the Self, which is four-dimensional. Jung defines the Self as the totality of the psyche; or it is the centre of gravity of the whole psyche, as opposed to the ego which is only the centre of consciousness, and a rather provisional entity. The Self is to be found in the unconscious, associated with the collective unconscious, or humanity as a whole. Thus it does not have a separate existence, but is a unit of humanity, although an individual unit and a whole in itself (symbolised by a circle or mandala). It is Self-realisation, or becoming conscious of the Self, the integration of conscious and unconscious, that Jung calls "individuation", and sees as the goal to be attained in life, and as synonymous with "enlightenment" or higher consciousness. It results not in a loss but a stepping-up of consciousness, and true individuality. This also means the integration of thinking with feeling, the re-uniting of the Virgo-Pisces opposites, the goal of the Christian Era, attainable only on the next level. In the Gospels the inner truth, or Self, is constantly referred to as "the kingdom of heaven".
The next polarity is that of Leo-Aquarius, the signs for intuitive thinking. Aquarius, the fixed air sign, implies inner thinking, and also symbolises universality, and vibratory energy, a higher level of energy, and a higher science. Leo is the sign of the Sun, of individuality, and as a fire sign is intuition itself; self-expression through universality and higher thinking must be the goal of the new age. The fixed cross brings us at the same time to a deeper or more inward focus, which has nothing of the duality or tendency to dispersal of the mutable signs. It is of profound significance that Aquarius is ruled not only by Uranus - transformation, the descent of illumination from above, or lightening - but also by Saturn, the principle of conscious individuality, showing that the lessons of Saturn first have to be learned before entering the Aquarian age. The universality of Aquarius is one of conscious individuals, and of thinking, and is not dissolution into the ocean of pure feeling. Many consciousness-raising techniques and prophets circulating today, especially those with an Eastern bias, do not recognise this and advocate "self-extinguishing"; they teach "bliss" as the ultimate aim of evolution. This is a wish to return to where we came from, the womb even, and to opt out of our earthly existence, without having learned anything from it (the lessons of Saturn). Thus all this mess and suffering will have been for nothing, and we play truant, and disregard the crucifixion. This is heathen, in a deep sense.
There is now a rapidly growing awareness of impending change, and a proliferation of gurus and preachers of every kind. All of them neglect the forms into which this new consciousness is to be put, or the paradigm of knowledge which is to embody it, and so leave new wine to be put into old bottles. We are today at a different stage of the evolution of consciousness, and methods and forms of earlier periods, though they may achieve some results and be a great improvement on the mass unconsciousness which prevails today, are not necessarily the most relevant for the present age of discriminatory thinking. Above all it is seldom taken into account that it is the method of thinking itself, going back to Aristotle, that has to undergo a transformation of its basic premises and principles.
What we usually regard as thinking is the manipulation of words and concepts more or less in vacuo, or in and for themselves - a process carried to an extreme and ad absurdum in much 20th century "philosophy". It is entirely verbal in nature, and linguistic. Words primarily are signs (not symbols) in the form of sounds, which serve as labels for things we experience through our senses, so that we can refer to them and communicate with one another. Then words start classifying these experiences into groups, and become generalisations. Then they start giving them feeling tone, and string these generalisations into concepts, becoming further and further removed from empirical experience and more abstract, so that they usually finish up, at best, as meaningless, but more often as confusing, and worse as inhibiting all true perception. This is where we have got to at the present stage in history. But words are the vehicle or the medium of thinking, and so for thinking to function usefully, and in an integral manner, this has to be put right. This is the object of philosophical debate - to fashion our concepts so that they may correspond to reality, and aid perception rather than hinder and confuse it. Debate can be nothing more than a critique and analysis of language and concepts. And most of the concepts in use today are essentially meaningless; they actually prevent thought, by making people think they understand something simply by putting a name on it, and blocking further awareness. They come to depend entirely on these concepts, which serve as a refuge from reality, and the basis of every kind of delusion and make-believe. The superstition which attaches to concepts is of a far more serious and destructive kind than that associated with "old wives' tales", walking under ladders, fairies or witches.
There is another kind of thinking besides conceptual thinking in words, and that is picture-thinking, thinking in correspondences. The one is left brain thinking, and can be called Aristotelian, and the other is right brain, and non-Aristotelian. This can also be called symbolic thinking. This is of course strictly empirical, and is guided by intuition. Here words can be used to designate symbols, and for defining and ordering perceptions, but without becoming independent and tyrannical determinants in their own right. They will not follow their own logic, but serve to increase consciousness by bringing everything we observe into true perspective in relation to the whole and to ourselves. Above all they will define relations, and not separate phenomena. Of course this is very important because verbal concepts have such a hold over us, and have supplanted our natural instincts. They virtually cast a veil over our sensations, distort and warp our feelings, and blot out our intuition altogether. "We never even come near to understanding how many non-existent things play a role in our life, govern our fate and our actions". 2 It is in favour of conceptual thinking, "reason", "Vernunft", that we have repressed our feeling nature and turned ourselves into neurotics. Hegel is our prophet; Faust our mythos.
It is symptomatic of the over-valuation of concepts that those not familiar with defining the four psychological functions, and especially feeling types, will react by referring to all experience as "feeling", while denying the validity of attempting to encompass it in words. Thinking however, and words, are for orientating oneself in the world of experiences, sorting them out and differentiating, so developing consciousness. They are not for supplanting experience, though this is exactly what they do at present.
To develop consciousness we need not only to see, but to interpret and understand what we see. To quote Zosimos3 we need " the investigation of the arts, of wisdom, of reason and understanding, the efficacious methods and revelations which throw light upon the secret words", to be able to turn our vision to account. We have to adapt our thinking to a higher level in order to function efficiently and achieve integration, and remove the principle obstacle to further development, which is wrong thinking. It is this that closes our eyes and minds and prevents understanding; it is the aberrations of language and illusory concepts, and the attachment to meaningless and disconnected abstractions, of a lifeless and mechanical kind, that more than anything else keeps us in darkness - "the profound twilight in which we live" (Jung). The proper development of language is knowledge made conscious; it is the essence of consciousness. Jnana Yoga, the yoga of knowledge, is perhaps the highest form of yoga.
In astrology language and conceptual thinking come under Mercury. In "The Spirit Mercurius" 4 Jung cites the fairytale from Grimm in which Mercurius is found confined in a bottle, and buried beneath an oak tree (a symbol of the Self). He interprets Mercurius as the principium individuationis; at the same time as an evil spirit, since it is shut up in a bottle - the individuation principle as the source of all evil in Schopenhauer (Pisces) and in Buddhism, and in Christianity original sin - the knowledge of good and evil, or the principle of discrimination, and consciousness, (Virgo). In the fairytale, Mercurius is equivalent to the devil; but at the same time can change metals into gold; "Hermes god of thieves and cheats, but also of revelation". Throughout alchemy Mercurius is associated with a wide variety of complex and obscure symbols, and is composed of all the opposites, as Jung points out, a condition of consciousness: "sharper discrimination ... the sine qua non for any broadening or heightening of consciousness". Essentially he has a dual nature, "he is two dragons", or twins, the light and the dark, the ruler of Gemini in astrology. He is the Word or Logos - hence truth or lie; he can be Lucifer, the light bringer, or the fires of hell; Prometheus or his brother Epimetheus. Mercury is so central to alchemy, through the whole process, from the prima materia to the philosophers' stone itself, or the gold, that we have to think of it as symbolising a science of consciousness, or even of semantics. The goal is the stone of philosophy, and the gold of illumination, and this is to be reached not by a mystical evaporation, but by a transformation of thinking and the use of language. This can only come about through intuition (fire) - Mercury subjected to fire in the retort - or the completion of the quarternity of functions. In other words, the integration of conscious and unconscious, and it is for this reason that Mercury is thought of as psychopomp, or messenger of the gods. Jung sums up the exact situation in the last paragraph of his "The Spirit Mercurius":
"Mercurius, that two-faced god, comes as the lumen naturae, the Servator and Salvator, only to those whose reason strives towards the highest light ever received by man...For those who are unmindful of this light, the lumen naturae turns into a perilous ignis fatuus, and the psychopomp into a diabolical seducer. Lucifer, who could have brought light, becomes the father of lies whose voice in our time, supported by press and radio, revels in orgies of propaganda and leads untold millions to ruin".
The transformation of consciousness, the goal of alchemy, on the thinking level, and the understanding of a higher reality, is dependent upon learning to think symbolically, which in turn requires a radically different conceptual paradigm and a regeneration of language in keeping with this new vision. This means an alchemy of the mind, that transforms everything, and this is why Mercurius was so important in alchemy - the transforming substance, or Hermes, the god of revelation; "a species of magical power in the human mind". The aim of alchemy was the exaltation of the intellect to "the golden understanding".
One of the key concepts which determine our present world view is probably the idea of causality, and this is inseparably bound up with our idea of time. Like time, causality is a linear explanation of a non-linear (multidimensional) reality. In comparing his idea of Synchronicity with the I Ching, Jung writes: "Just as causality describes the sequence of events, so synchronicity to the Chinese mind deals with the coincidence of events," with the inter-relatedness of the events of each moment. (Synchronicity concerns the manifestation at the same time, and on different levels, of phenomena related in meaning, but with no possible causal connection on the material plane, and statistically impossible in terms of coincidence.) One thinks of causality as almost the same thing as time, and working in one direction only, from before to after. Yet the "cause" of performing an action may be the anticipation of the result of doing so, and be in the future, so that "cause" and "effect" become interchangeable concepts; or "effect" equals purpose. The point of articulation is the present, or the "now", and it is at this joint, at the intersection between past and future, that "free-will" would have to be interpolated. Free-will is certainly connected with purpose, and thus is the agent reversing causality. As a concept, free-will is dependent upon causality, if it is to mean anything, and implies on the one hand, (looking backwards,) acting independently or in spite of causality; and on the other, looking forwards, initiating and being the agent of a new chain of causality. Thus it is a break in the chain, but is dependent on the existence of such a chain. It makes causality a very conditional concept, the more so the more widely we distribute free-will, which is expanding more and more nowadays, and is a contradictory principle to causality.
On the other hand, if one is addicted to causality, it is very hard to give it up and concede that it only applies if not subject to willing. I might will something in the future and thus myself become an initiating cause of that thing; but on the other hand something else might have caused me to will it, so that the freedom of my willing would be illusory. If it be a case of my choosing freely between one motivation, or possibility, and another, there will always be some past cause that will prevail in my decision, and tip the balance. If the "cause" be supposed in the future, as free-will implies (final cause), this is really only dialectics, because such a concept only means motivation, and the causes of this lie in the past, (if not simply physiological). It depends upon the beliefs, values and priorities to which I have been conditioned and influenced. An unconditional causality must lead to determinism, and in any case free-will and causality are uncomfortable bed-fellows.
Causality as an immediate explanation of physical phenomena is an essential part of our analytical understanding, of making connections between things on the material level. It results from empirical observation on this level, and enables us to design machines. Material causality (Causa Materialis) is mechanics, is a result of our observations of the orderedness of the immediate interactions of things within our particular framework of space-time - or how they appear to us. The reasons we assume for these are only speculation and theory, consisting of the arbitrary isolation of factors from a totality. It is a worm's-eye view of things, and turned into a philosophy of life it makes machines of those who do this. After Kant, we cannot know things in themselves, and we perceive them according to our sensibility, in space. In so far as they interact with themselves or us (motion), we perceive them in time, and call this aspect cause and effect, though the real nature of phenomena we cannot know. Our perceptions work for us within our time-scale to a limited extent, but not outside this, in relation to other time-scales, nor between different cycles, and here an entirely different logic prevails, that of correspondences and symbol. In this context mechanical causality has no place.
Mechanical causality does not apply on immaterial or non-physical levels, or to higher energies. This means it does not apply to life itself, apart from its physical manifestations (bodies); life cannot be "caused", or manufactured out of the non-living. It does not apply to the "life-force", formative or etheric energy, or psychic energy, or thought-forms. It is just life that is able to reverse causality, by producing "purpose". The "law of cause and effect" serves in a limited context as a modus operandi, like other formulae, or like Newtonian mechanics. It operates in isolating single events, or between two terms of an equation: thus if my engine runs out of petrol, empty tank = engine stops. It never explains the meaning of anything, or its relation to the greater whole. Attempts to make it do so lead to hopeless confusion and the shutting of doors; the same "law" then becomes an almost insuperable barrier to further progress, and a deadly pair of blinkers. The idea that any situation has to have one particular cause prevents awareness of the total configuration and of all the other factors involved in it, especially of the synchronous and psychic factors, and thus encourages a wholly unrealistic view of the world. So many avenues in scientific thinking are completely blocked by this concept, and so many resources dedicated to dead ends, looking for mechanical causes, or confusing causes with effects. The confusion in all branches of thinking in contemporary life - so obvious in something like politics - comes from attributing everything to causes - that is, in a complex situation, to isolated factors - instead of to the state of mind that manifests in all this.
This is particularly obvious in the statistical thinking to which we are reduced today - in other words not thinking but merely counting. For example, people with heart failure have a high level of cholesterol, we are told, therefore cholesterol causes heart disease, butter causes cholesterol, and we have a very wide choice as to what causes butter; whereas it makes for a much more integrated level of thinking, and a wider horizon, to notice that heart trouble is associated with certain kinds of astrological configurations involving stress patterns to the Sun or its sign Leo. Here again there is no question of causality. But we are now looking at it from a fourth dimensional point of view, and from the view of the relationship of the given circumstances to the totality of the individual life and to the cosmos. Not everyone who eats a lot of fat gets heart disease; but then we say that if those who are susceptible to it do so, that effect is likely to follow. When examining what this means there will arise so complicated a pattern of further ifs that it soon turns into a hopeless maze of interwoven factors, psychological and otherwise, that cannot lead anywhere, while the astrological pattern shows at once a certain susceptibility and all its ramifications and linkages. But not causes. It could just as well and more probably be true that heart disease causes cholesterol, and we have the chicken and the egg situation. We can see how modern medicine, in being obsessed with causes, consists to a large extent in trying to combat symptoms.
Smoking causes lung cancer; very well, but it doesn't always; and from a non-mechanistic point of view we could as well say that lung cancer causes smoking, or something else may be causing both. In fact the pattern must be there that manifests as either smoking or lung cancer, or both, without causality being involved at all. This pattern might involve Neptune, and it might equally well manifest as tuberculosis, or asphyxiation of some kind. The "cause" consists of whatever in the material circumstances lies ready to hand for the pattern, so that means is a truer word than cause. While for "pattern" we can substitute psychological content, the best language for describing which would be certain configurations of Neptune. At different periods certain patterns, as well as certain phenomena such as smoking or tuberculosis, are particularly prevalent, and are not fortuitous but an aspect of the social and psychological collective totality. There are people who smoke all their lives, even chain smoke, without getting lung cancer, whereas if lung cancer is an appropriate development for others they will probably take to smoking. The fox took my two hens today - what was the cause of this? They have been there for three years without being taken. The fox just decided today to have poultry for dinner; or he may have been passing by accident, or especially hungry, finding rabbits scarce, or a hundred other things. Or the wind took the roof off my barn; this means: wind, of a certain velocity and direction = roof gone. If we attempt to go further back from these two simple terms in the chain of causality it becomes hopelessly involved.
Let us suppose that someone causes an explosion by striking a match near a petrol tank. Is the event in this case deliberately caused, that is, the consequence of free-will? Or is it an "accident"? This last concept is defined as an unforeseen or unexpected event, or one happening by "chance", that is, "without assignable cause". One might assign the cause to ignorance, forgetfulness, or imprudence, and from each of these other causes radiate out ad infinitum, so that it is quite arbitrary where to begin or end. If we confine ourselves to the actual flame reacting with the gas, this is to regard it as an isolated phenomenon without agent, which is impossible. On the other hand if it is the result of free-will on the part of some agent, this also implies a negation of causality, and we can't have it both ways. Causality and free-will cannot co-exist.
Rather we could say that a whole lot of psychic factors came together at that time and place, or a pattern formed, that manifested and materialised as an explosion; that this was the character of the moment, as a confluence of energies, and this pattern could be read in the stars, in relation to that time and place, though the stars did not cause it. The person who struck the match probably had a Sun-Uranus pattern in his natal horoscope. If everything interacts with everything else as an unfolding of its nature, and is a part of everything else, and a reflection, in its own terms, the concept "cause" can have no place, and only gives rise to misconceptions, and inappropriate reactions. But if we see the world around us as a reflection of ourselves, we can begin to understand our relation to it, and it is again a question of outside or inside, of projection or comprehension. "All theories of natural phenomena, including the 'laws' they describe, are creations of the human mind; properties of our conceptual map of reality, rather than reality itself"; 5 or: "Matter, after all, is nothing else than the sequence of our own states of consciousness", and: "The degree of materiality of matter depends upon the plane of consciousness of the observer." 6
Ouspensky, in Tertium Organum, wrote:
"Desiring to understand the noumenal world we must search for the hidden meaning in everything. At present we are too heavily enchained by the habit of the positivistic method of searching always for the visible cause and the visible effect."
And:
"Could we succeed in finding and establishing a connection between the simple phenomena of our life and the life of the cosmos, then without doubt in those 'simplest' phenomena would be unveiled for us an infinity of the new and unexpected.."
Later:
"Our senses, however, are too primitive, our concepts are too crude, for that fine differentiation of phenomena which must unfold itself to us in higher space. Our minds, our powers of correlation and association are sufficiently elastic for the grasping of new relations. Therefore, the first emotion at the rising curtain on 'that world' - i.e., this our world, but free of those limitations under which we usually regard it - must be of wonderment, and this wonderment must grow greater and greater according to our better acquaintance with it. And the better we know a certain thing or a certain relation of things - the nearer, the more familiar they are to us - the greater will be our wonder at the new and unexpected therein revealed."
He suggests for an example considering the street of a great city:
"The complex and enormous phenomena of the street will not reveal its infinite noumenon, which is bound up both with eternity and with time, with the past and with the future, and with the entire world.
Therefore we have a full right to regard the visible phenomenal world as a section of some other infinitely more complex world, manifesting itself at a given moment in the first one." 7
We have two kinds of obvious manifestations of this world of higher dimensions in the phenomena of synchronicity and astrology. These are closely related and, short of the phenomena of sub-atomic physics or, more recently, "Chaos" theory, are the most evident contradictions to the principle of mechanical causality in empirical experience. Jung says in relation to synchronicity:
"Meaningful coincidences are thinkable as pure chance. But the more they multiply and the greater and more exact the correspondences, the more their probability sinks and their unthinkability increases, until they can no longer be regarded as pure chance but, for lack of a causal explanation, have to be thought of as meaningful arrangements...Their 'inexplicability' is not due to the fact that the cause is unknown, but to the fact that a cause is not even thinkable in intellectual terms."
And:
"It is only the ingrained belief in the sovereign power of causality that creates intellectual difficulties and makes it appear unthinkable that causeless events exist or could ever occur." 8
It is precisely the word meaning that embodies a principle opposed to both causality and chance, and by common consent among enlightened observers it is just this quality that is so disastrously lacking in the modern view of the world and to the modern psyche.
Jung describes synchronicity as showing a modality without a cause, and an "acausal orderedness".
"The modern discovery of discontinuity (e.g. the orderedness of energy quanta, of radium decay etc.) has put an end to the sovereign rule of causality and thus to the triad of principles" - (space, time, causality). "Synchronicity must be explained either as magical causality or transcendental meaning (the same meaning manifesting in the psyche and an external event simultaneously)". 9 "Synchronicity postulates a meaning which is a priori in relation to human consciousness and apparently exists outside man. Such an assumption is found above all in the philosophy of Plato". Meaning "forms the indispensable criterion of synchronicity".
Astrology is the one discipline that constitutes a systematic study of synchronicity and provides for it an integrated terminology, system of thought and empirical knowledge developed over the ages. Astrology is above all the science of meaning. Moreover, it is not a question of the rare or occasional manifestation of synchronous phenomena, but of observing them all the time, and in everything, once we have accustomed ourselves to being conscious of such things. Ouspensky understood this exactly, though he did not make the connection with astrology:
"The ability to discover new analogies is the beginning of changes, which translate us into another plane of existence...Phenomena may suddenly assume quite a different grouping...quite separate, disconnected things may be part of one great whole, of some entirely new category.." 10
While art and the unconscious have always dealt in such analogies or correspondences (symbols), which are the language of intuition, astrology provides the conscious ordering of this process and a consistent terminology, in terms of the most basic and cosmic symbols, that can apply to everything. It supplies the new categories.
That any microcosm corresponds to the macrocosm of which it is a part is demonstrated by such techniques as aural acupuncture, which treats each part or organ of the body not directly but in its corresponding position in the external ear, and in a similar way the whole organism can be read in the iris of the eye, or in the soles of the feet. These facts are very discouraging to any addiction to causality, as is the demonstrable reality that a horoscope can be applied, and found effective, in any context related to its moment. In spite of this astrologers are for ever grasping at some kind of cause, or direct physical influence, however tenuous, to account for their observations within the framework of prevailing dogma, to be "scientific", mechanistic, and within the pale of Aristotelian respectability. They imagine that without causes they are lost, or astrology is a lost cause. Causality is so ingrained in our thinking that it must be the hardest of all idols to give up, and even more clung to than free-will. And for this reason it is the most stultifying of all concepts and the principal barrier to understanding and consciousness. Even Rodney Collin, who gives such a good demonstration of the harmonic and functional correspondences between different cosmoses, on different time-scales, cannot get away from supposing some kind of physical influence or "mechanism". Thus the planets have affinities with the endocrine glands and therefore "control" them and their related functions. "Exactly how such instruments respond to the influence of their heavenly archetypes it is difficult to say, except in a general way". It is mechanical thinking that leads to the uninspiring concept of "Eternal Recurrence", where there is no escape from time. Nowadays the idea of magnetic fields provides a plausible mechanical hypothesis ( though no-one knows what they are) and gives us an extension of credibility or a provisional alibi; thus Robert Carl Jansky argues that eclipses influence events on earth by changing the magnetic field, and that this must affect our psychic disposition and ultimately our behaviour. However, let one contemplate the Sun and Moon, the active and passive principles and components of the psyche, the Yang and the Yin; these are in the sky, by day and by night respectively, and are the same size, as we view them. Everything about the Moon, its periods, dimensions and constitution is exactly tailored to life on earth, and yet it "defies all the laws of logic" 8 and presents us with a series of impossible coincidences. The cycles and period of the rest of the planets present a parallel picture of correspondences, and stretch mechanical credulity to the outermost limits.
If one could imagine the movements of the planets in the solar system (transits) as exerting an influence, by invoking higher energies, magnetic fields and resonance, one would expect the nearer and larger planets, such as Venus, Mars, Jupiter, the Sun and Moon, to be the most powerful, and the outer and more remote bodies progressively weaker, until we reach Pluto, distant, invisible and apparently small ("no bigger than Mercury"), which should exert an absolutely negligible effect. In reality the reverse is the case, and the further out from the Sun we get the more powerful is the observed "influence", until in Pluto we arrive at concentrated power, and the embodiment of ruthless upheaval, of fate itself in its darkest aspect. It is the Sun and Moon, which obviously exert the greatest physical influence, magnetic and "gravitational", which are negligible in assessing transits, and are only used for timing the more weighty matters associated with the outer planets. Rodney Collin suggests that the most powerful influence should be felt when a planet is directly overhead in the horoscope; but again, it is strongest when on the horizon, at the greatest possible angle to the birth place. Then as if this were not confusing enough for causes, it is not one's physical organism at the time of a transit that is affected directly, but it is one's horoscope, and the positions of the heavenly bodies at birth, that are subject to the supposed influence. It is one's initial "pattern".
It is conceivable that the horoscope represents the subtle bodies or "astrum", "corps ÉnergÉtique", which is structured according to the planets at birth, incorporating those energies or frequencies in a certain angular relationship to one another, reinforcing or interfering with one another, forming a singular chord or blend of harmonious or discordant notes. Or it could be thought of as an instrument with strings tuned to differrent pitches and intervals, which then resonate to the planetary tones as they repeat the same frequencies, or come from the same or related quarters (signs of the Zodiac). This is nevertheless an exceedingly difficult and complicated piece of "mechanism" to imagine, and would have to be put into the category of "far-fetched". All theories of mysterious "rays" coming in to earth, and not subject to the regular periodicity of the planets, are still the result of the inability to get clear from "mechanism".
How much more impossible is it however to asociate any kind of mechanism with "progressions", or "directions", which are the purely symbolic movements of the planets in the horoscope, after or before birth. Thus, on the basis of the correspondence of one revolution of the Earth on its own axis with one revolution around the Sun (a day for a year), the age of a person in years at any given time is read as the same number of days after birth, and the positions of the planets noted. These will symbolise the situation at the corresponding age in years. This same thing can be done by taking the equivalent number of days before birth (converse directions), and the situation will be found to be relevant. The horoscope can be "progressed" moreover in other ways, such as noting the arc made by the Sun on the equivalent number of days after birth to years in life, and progressing all the planets by the same amount (solar arc directions), regardless of the actual individual movements of the different planets themselves. The orientation of the horoscope according to the zodiacal degree rising on the Eastern horizon at the moment of birth (the Ascendant) is of major importance in the same way. The "houses" which result from the original Ascendant (the twelve-fold division of the sphere, above and below the axis of the East-West points at birth, dividing it into daytime and night-time hemispheres), can play a decisive role in the interpretation. The fact that all these methods "work" shows a total holistic integration of microcosm and macrocosm, of above and below, and makes any kind of mechanistic causality inconceivable. One can even work out a natal chart and progressions in terms of the mid-points between the planets, instead of the planets themselves, and arrive at equally relevant and incontrovertible results.
If the horoscope is integrated on the one hand with the cosmos, and on the other with the individual psyche, and shows that everything corresponds and functions as a whole, it cannot be partly mechanical and partly not so. If life is not subject to mechanical causality, and can bring in purpose, this is usually explained by substituting the opposing principle of free-will. If every cycle or whole, and every "cosmos", up to the galactic, is thought of as a living organism, part of a hierarchy of time-scales, and a functioning part of the macrocosm, then each one as well as the whole must function and develop organically and in an organic and holistic relationship, and there is no room for any kind of mechanistic concept. For mechanical means inorganic, and lifeless. Reich found that the all-pervading "orgone" energy is a specifically biological energy; therefore life is not an accidental post-script to a mechanical universe, but the prima materia, as all occult cosmologies teach. It is already beginning to be shown that evolution, or the history of the earth, does not consist of the emergence of life from dead and inorganic minerals that constituted the primeval nature of the planet; but the other way round, and what are at present rocks and minerals resulted originally from living organisms. Dr. Eugen Kolisko cites the researches, under the heading of "geo-chemistry", of the Russian professor Vernardsky, who "shows that organic life, directly or indirectly, plays an immense part not only in the creation of limestone but in that of all other rocks." "The problem is not the discovery of life spontaneously generating itself out of the lifeless, but the reverse: how the originally living earth became so 'dead' as it appears to be today?" 11 He refers to the vast energy potential of life compared with the non-living: "the comparatively small, tremendously intensive quality of the bio-sphere, is at the base of all evolution". Ouspensky expresses the same idea: "the liberating force of life and thought is infinitely greater than the liberating force of mechanical motion and of chemical reactions. The microscopic living cell is more powerful than a volcano - the idea is more powerful than the geological cataclysm." 12
In the long run we cannot allow logically the dualism of life and non-life, or organic and inorganic, any more than that of spirit and matter. Everything must be or result from life, if we have life at all, or be a manifestation of spirit, and all is ultimately One. Neither can man evolve from the animals, any more than spirit from matter, nor ever the higher from the lower, but again the reality is the other way round. "The higher cannot be a function of the lower", 13 nor the part greater than the whole.
"Without making a palpable logical mistake we cannot declare life and the psyche to be dependent functionally upon physical phenomena, i.e., to be a result of physical phenomena. The truth is quite the opposite of this: everything forces us to recognise physical phenomena as the result of life, and life (in a biological sense) as the result of some form of psychic life, which is perhaps unknown to us."
It is even yet still a dogma of mechanistic thinking that man has evolved from the animals, but again the truth is the opposite. Rudolf Steiner and The Secret Doctrine tell us that the animals are off-shoots from human evolution that remained behind, or got stuck at a certain stage. Ouspensky, quite independently, came to the same conclusion:
"Animals, which are our 'ancestors' according to Darwin, are in reality not our ancestors, but very often as much the 'descendants' of long-vanished human races as we are...Animals are our cousins...In them are embodied properties which cannot change. Animals are the embodiment of those human properties which became useless and impossible in man."14
On the face of it, animals seem to embody frozen prototypes or exaggerations of the different organs, body structures, functions, and behaviour patterns, attitudes and types that we know so well in humans.
As evolution and development proceed there is increasing differentiation, towards increasingly perfect microcosms, and eventually conscious ones (in the sense of thinking and self-conscious ones), ultimately transcending their own cycle. Man is exactly half-way in the hierarchy of descending time-scales, which may be likened to the descending harmonic series from the original cosmic tone.15 Each individual is a part of this process, and functions well or ill in that sense. Since this is the only sense in which to evaluate that function, there is no room for evaluating it on an independent basis, and therefore no room for free-will. "Free" is attuned to the whole, otherwise it is degeneration, and it is in the nature of life to develop; to be in tune with Nature does not require, or has nothing to do with free-will. One does not encourage free-will in a symphony orchestra, but the less free, in the sense of independent, each player is the more satisfactory, both to himself (in a transcendent way) and to the outcome. Transcendence is liberation from a time-cycle, and this is quite a different kind of freedom; one can say that it is free from "free-will". In relation to humanity as a whole, one can think of oneself as only a "transient phase" (Rudhyar) of "human potential". One identifies rather with the whole symphony.
Astrology is always confronted with the question of free-will, and astrologers are forced to skate around this pot-hole and adopt various compromise stances according to their intellectual level - such as: "the stars impel but do not compel" - and feel obliged in one way or another to concede independence from the horoscope. The latter is often represented as a mere suggestion on the part of destiny, which the "native" is free to ignore if so inclined. Although astrology is the most visible contradiction of the current model of reality, very few astrologers are able to digest this, and they nearly always try to explain or excuse it in terms of the old concepts.
Astrologers who have studied Jung adopt his dictum that "free-will is the ability to do gladly that which I must do" - which really amounts to saying that free-will equals consciousness. Castaneda's "Don Juan" gives much the same view:
"The course of a warrior's destiny is unalterable. The challenge is how far he can go within those rigid bounds, how impeccable he can be within those rigid bounds...All his tears put together could not move the line of his destiny the breadth of one hair."
Alexander Ruperti in Cycles of Becoming:
"The only true freedom exists in an individual's ability to give to his crises either the meaning of growth and fulfillment, or the meaning of hopeless frustration and disintegration. We, and not the planets, are responsible for the results of all life-confrontations."
The "humanist" school of astrologers sees the horoscope as patterns of possibilities, but subject to choice rather than to destiny; as opportunities which have to be grasped. One can see it as archetypal patterns of energy which may manifest on any level or in any form, mental or physical, in the same way as omens or the phenomena of synchronicity, and how they manifest may depend on the level of development of the "native", or on the degree of consciousness, but certainly not on his choice or free-will. Stress patterns tend to manifest in the crudest and most material way in the case of more unconscious persons; but on the other hand they can also be purely physical for a relatively conscious one. It is not possible to predict in what precise way or in what context a pattern will manifest, so we judge it as a pattern of probability, in relation to the rest of the chart, and in relation to the mundane and psychological circumstances prevailing. It will almost certainly manifest in a number of ways, according to the various possible meanings of the symbols involved, and much of our imprecision is undoubtedly due to insufficient knowledge and insufficient ability to read the total pattern; but how much this is so we cannot say at present. Therefore we cannot tell to what extend a horoscope is a map of ineluctable destiny, nor probably the level of development of its owner; but we can say that its patterns will be manifest in some way or ways, both inside and out, as synchronous phenomena in the environment, and we can estimate some of the probabilities. A physician is in much the same position, and his knowledge of the totality of bodily and mental processes is at least as limited as the astrologer's comprehension of the total pattern and inter-relation of all the factors in the horoscope.
It is common to see very promising configurations which do not appear to be realised in the life in question, which seem to be a "dumb note"; while conversely other patterns which often occur in criminals can belong to harmless, even admirable persons. It is fairly obvious in these cases that it is a question of level of development, and also that it is a question of understanding all the factors in the psyche-horoscope as a totality rather than separately, and we are a very long way from achieving this. Even such a factor as the strengths or placements, favorable or otherwise, of the planets in an individual horoscope is only vaguely and varyingly understood in so far as it affects the interpretation of the patterns, and we are still only groping our way.
The horoscopes of twins present a problem, because the same, or nearly the same, chart can represent very different destinies, and very different temperaments. We must conclude, and indeed it makes sense, that the incarnating beings are different, and the patterns in the joint horoscope represent circumstances, inner and outer, that they have to deal with, or that manifest in them, but not their essential natures, or what they were before. Hence the outcomes are different. One can also talk of levels of development. It is further possible that different parts of the pattern can be activated, or more activated, by each individual, and it has been shown that this sometimes seems to be the case. This may be especially so when the twins are of different sex. The idea of reincarnation is an essential ingredient of astrology, which ultimately cannot make sense without it; and since the reality of astrology cannot be doubted, except by looking the other way, that of reincarnation is a corollary.
There is a great deal of confusion as to what a horoscope actually is, as well as over how it can be whatever it is. It can be interpreted in any context or on any level, and be seen to correspond with the way things manifest in that context, as though by magic. The old astrologers were more concerned with the material appurtenances of life and with events, and therefore found indications of a person's goods and possessions, family, occupation, love-life and social life, health, and above all his destiny in the chart, and what will happen to him. Today we read his character, and his psychology, his psyche, both conscious and unconscious, and we accept the proposition: "character is destiny". There can however be special branches of astrology dedicated to studying some particular aspect of life and how it is symbolised in the horoscope - such as medical astrology, or financial astrology, or anything whatever, and there are somewhat separate techniques such as horary astrology for answering specific questions about everyday affairs in the manner of an oracle. Therefore while the horoscope may symbolise events, it can equally well symbolise anything we choose, and be applied to everything, for the obvious reason that everything is connected and all cosmoses correspond in all their parts. It symbolises any totality at the moment of birth; or it charts the synchronicity of each moment, the general configuration within our macrocosm, the solar system, at each moment in time, to which every lesser cosmos within it corresponds and receives the imprint at birth. It is the moment of form, when the archetypal patterns are crystallised or condensed onto the material plane, hence fixed; when higher energies descend to earth and are incarnated in an individual time-cycle. Hence it is the moment of Saturn, when "time and form create a single pattern" (Rodney Collin): "Just as man's whole capacity and character are written in his face - could we but read it - so they are written in his time." This pattern is the "long body" of his life, the whole crystallised at that moment, while the macrocosm continues to change. The individual pattern reflects these changes as they proceed, but retains its individual form; that is, the future development of the macrocosm is incorporated in it from the start, or anticipated; or the cycle it represents reacts or resonates to the still moving forces of the planets as they make angles to their original positions which are frozen in the birth-chart. One cannot say however that it reacts or resonates, as though to something from outside, when all this is already written in it; and so one has to think of it in the fourth dimension, as the "long body" of a life. And this is very different from thinking of it as "predetermined".
In the fifth dimension, where time is one, or the past and the future coexist, the concepts causality and free-will become meaningless, the one as much as the other. Equally, as soon as we think in terms of a whole in which everything is inter-related, and part of the whole, neither of these concepts makes any sense. To pick out the immediately contiguous and antecedent phenomenon as the cause of something is an entirely arbitrary way of thinking conditioned by a priori mechanistic assumptions and by Aristotelian or extraverted logic, confined to our three-dimensional conceptions. Everything else in the totality of integrated phenomena, or the functioning whole, could equally well be designated "cause". If we think of an event (a result) taking place on the surface of a sphere (or a "space-time continuum"), its relevance radiates to and from all directions (to an infinite extent), whether considered as cause (outgoing) or effect (incoming) and these cannot be reduced to points. Conversely if any part of this whole exhibits "free-will" - i.e. behaves independently and separately from the whole, this would be a diseased condition like cancer, which one would consider involuntary and fateful and not at all a higher level of being. Causality and free-will, although contradictory, are part of the same way of seeing things, and require independence from the whole. There can be no causality if everything is inter-connected - unless there is free-will. But this would affect everything, and would be itself extraneous and have to come from outside; it cannot be part of the whole, otherwise it could not affect or alter the whole. It would require independence of a part, and unrelatedness to the whole. This theoretically would only be possible to God, or the original Absolute. Nor is this a "determinist" view, because "determinism" implies an unvarying and fixed causality, of a mechanistic kind, whereas in getting rid of causality we are precisely getting rid of mechanistic thinking. Thus the "determinism" of Spinoza is not of the materialistic kind, but follows from his monism. All natural phenomena, including human "free-will", belong to the same order and the same whole. "Nature must be understood, not as a temporal sequence of events, but as a logical sequence of modifications necessarily connected with one another". Further: "To think of things or persons as fulfilling, or failing to fulfill, a purpose or design is to imply the existence of a creator distinct from his creation; this is demonstrably a meaningless conception". Everything is necessarily as it is, as part of the whole of Nature. Moral judgements infer otherwise, and so have to invent "free-will"; but in so far as this is possible, it must be immoral, or contrary to Nature or God.
This does not preclude evolution or quantum theory (the change of levels) but it necessitates a different kind of thinking, on a higher level than the material one of cause and effect. This means a higher level of consciousness. If "free-will" means partaking of the nature of God, we can only do so in the measure in which we are conscious. Then free-will is synonymous with consciousness; and it means being a conscious part of the whole, not an independent and discordant entity.
All ideas of determinism or free-will (predictability or unpredictability) take as their premise the linear, successive and one-way concept of time. But if we think ultimately in terms of levels and the inter-dimensionality and differentiation of consciousness, the way might be opened to getting out of these categories, though this is difficult to visualise from within our cave. Rudhyar proposes a rather different solution to this dilemma in terms of "the nearly infinite complexity of interactions between existents" providing a limited component of unpredictability, though the final outcome is determined. (The Planetarization of Consciousness, p.154). From our point of view the important thing is to allow the possibility of a different way of thinking so that we cease to be imprisoned in our present categories and understand them as, at best, relative and applying only within our three-dimensional world view.
We can only be conscious in so far as we are able, and so are not free to choose our level; and we can only strive to become more so - i.e. to choose - in so far as we are conscious. And consciousness means the development of the thinking function and its integration, both subjectively, with the other functions, and objectively, with the totality of existence and with celestial harmonies (God, within and without). Our degree of consciousness determines what we choose, or whether we endeavour to progress to the next higher level. Thus the more conscious we are or become (free), the less free we choose to be, in the sense of separate, but the more free we actually are, because (the only causality that is logical) we partake in the nature of God, the only real freedom, and are separately (freely) not separate. While the less conscious we are of being thus free, and the more under the illusion of being separate (free in this sense), the less free we actually are. Therefore "free-will" has no meaning as an independent concept. This is obvious to others in the case of lunatics, but on the "normal" level, where nearly everyone shares the same illusion, its illusory character becomes invisible.
On the other hand "Fate" or the pre-determination of everything excludes development. It requires confinement within a time-circle, and eternal recurrence; there is no getting outside of time, or a particular cosmos. Therefore Saturn is Fate, the ring-pass-not. An escape from fate means also an escape from time, or time as we know it, as a condition of material life on Earth. It means, in quantum theory, the possibility of a quantum jump, or change of level, and from the circle to the spiral. This is represented in music by the "Pythagorean comma", the difference between the scale as derived from a series of seven octaves, and from one of twelve fifths: "the geometrical figure produced by a series of twelve natural fifths would be a spiral. Equal temperament reduces the spiral to a circle. It establishes the boundaries of a musical field limited to octaves." 16 It is worth noting in respect of twelve and seven that the orbital period of Jupiter is twelve years, while that of Saturn is a multiple of seven. The moon combines both numbers in its cycles. An escape from Fate means a transcendence of Earth-consciousness, so again we are referring to level of consciousness and all such words as Fate, Free-Will or Time are bound up with the archetype Saturn, and have no independent meaning. Their use spells confusion and an obsolete world-view. They are the idols of an age that is passing, and this is the "Twilight of the Idols."
If everything is inter-connected, Fate, like Time, is only a view, and it makes no more sense worshipping it than worshipping Free-Will, or that popular nineteenth century idol, Accident. The great adventure is consciousness, and what we do depends upon this, and Happiness, that elusive and misunderstood ideal, is only yet another word for consciousness. (Unhappiness implies however not unconsciousness, being in itself a qualification of consciousness, but a consciousness of discord). The increase of the one means the increase of the other. There are many grades of consciousness, as well as major levels, or orbits, and there is also the question of gradual transition or definitive change of grade or level. The principle of discontinuity is behind quantum theory, and the astrology of the Zodiac, and is also consistent with Zen and its teaching of sudden enlightenment. Integration is another aspect of consciousness, but presupposes first differentiation, so that one can say that consciousness also includes in its meaning the terms differentiation and integration, and a synthesis of these polarities, a reconciliation of opposites. Individuation means being attuned to the whole as a corresponding unit, and conscious of this. It is the whole (God) become conscious in one unit; expansion away from (Jupiter) and contraction towards (Saturn) the centre. Or centrifugal force and the force of gravity (centripetal) (weight, another meaning of Saturn).
Health is the harmonious integration of function into the whole, as in the case of parts or organs of the body, or of any cosmos, and level of development, or level of consciousness, is the degree to which one reflects or reproduces the whole, and is aware of it. This is the same as saying awareness of God, or of God within oneself, or the integration of consciousness with the Self, as a self-sustained but integrated microcosm. Free-will on the other hand is a concept based on the old Newtonian idea of separate particles, or separate entities, which have somehow to be brought together, but with no intrinsic inter-connections. It is a concept based on the premise of a world of separate egos, somehow independently buzzing about in three-dimensional space. This as an ideal is disintegration, and it is a world view closely related to schizophrenia. If everyone or everything is free we have a universe of chaos in which materialists would feel at home if it existed; but as it evidently does not, there must be interpolated a mysterious deity or non-deity called Accident, who initiates a self-contradictory régime of mechanical causality, which must ensure that no subsequent and rival accidents should intervene. For accident means not in the nature of things or outside of probability, and therefore would revert to chaos. Another more homely name for this original tribal god Accident is Big Bang.
Astrology "shows that every situation which arises in the phenomenal world is the expression of an inner content precipitating into the phenomenal world" (Döbereiner). And this content is a pattern in the archetypal world, and is prefigured in the horoscope. This is to say, it is inherent in both the incarnating being and in the moment of birth; the noumenal and phenomenal worlds coincide or are at one. Or it is a view of the individual moment and of the individual entity associated with that moment, in relation to the whole of time, to the evolution of the solar system and to history. If one does not accept this and looks for an external cause, failure to find one is excused or covered over by the concept "accident". If one thinks about "accident", it is really a non-word (a "spell-noise"), and implies a concurrence without any connection, order or meaning, or relation to anything else, nor to any logic, reason or system of thought, having no source, origin nor raison d'tre, nor creator nor originator - in short, which could not exist or manifest, so that the word itself is meaningless.
In the new view the whole of humanity is one cosmos, the individual another on a smaller scale, but corresponding in organisation and functions, and affecting the larger one according to the degree of integration and consciousness attained, in accordance with the harmonies of all higher cosmoses and of the spheres; or of disharmony, egoism, schizophrenia and disease. When one is conscious of oneness with life, or the All, one has no need of free-will and it is an irrelevant, even trivial concept; while it is precisely when aware of disharmony that one has the illusion of "free-will", and when one feels most ill-at-ease. One's ego-compulsions at such times are generally due to unconscious complexes and are in reality the very reverse of free-will. "The truth shall make you free" (John 8.32).
The popular ideas of determinism and Fate, as the opposites of free-will, depend upon the same premise of separate entities subjected to the alien laws of a mechanical universe, or of an arbitrary deus ex machina, and the same may be said of the concept Accident. This represents the intrusion of the irrational, or of chaos, and it is a curious quirk of the human intellect that it is just "rationalists" who insist on the ultimate ascendancy of Accident or chance as the first principle of the universe. Accident again contradicts both causality and free-will, yet this trilogy of incompatible concepts forms the basis of twentieth century thinking, as far as the establishment is concerned. Determinism perhaps makes a quaternity, and again contradicts all the others.
In an organic hierarchy where not only everything is connected with everything else, but in which every part is a microcosm of the whole, free-will or determinism, causality or accident, are irrelevant concepts, which only apply to a linear, temporal and mechanistic view of things, and even within such a view are illogical. If we have determinism we cannot have accident, if we have causality we cannot have free-will. We can logically hold onto causality and determinism, or free-will and accident (chance), provided these pairs to not intermingle; but nobody would want to do that, and they all want to have their cake and eat it, or to have some of all of these dog-biscuits. If you have chance there cannot be any meaning for the whole, it is ultimately equivalent to entropy and chaos, in psychological language dissociation. There can be no such thing as a whole. If you have determinism there cannot be any meaning for the individual or part - all is mechanically predetermined and there is really no such thing as an individual. But meaning refers to the dynamic relation of the part to the whole, and their interaction. To have meaning one must have both part and whole. In other words, a non-Aristotelian logic and world view, in which we look for correspondences, not causes, and think not of free-will but of consciousness.
To replace the above quaternity of non-existent principles, and help us to avoid wilfull absurdities, we have two very real experiences that are related to one another, and are both equally necessary for a healthy and tolerable human existence. These are a consciousness of meaning in life, and an activity of some kind of creativity or self-fulfillment.
We have already come across meaning in connection with the phenomena of synchronicity, as an alternative explanation to causality: "for lack of a causal explanation (they) have to be thought of as meaningful arrangements". 8 Jung goes into this in much detail in his essay on synchronicity, seeing meaning as the necessary connecting principle. Meaning is connection with the whole of creation, or the sense of relationship. It is the same thing as consciousness of the whole. It refers to the sense of one-ness with creation, and spontaneous participation - which is also "free-will". In one sense everything is free-will, in that we create our own reality. 17 Our reality is us in totality, so that there is no unfree will. Such as we are, the degree of our awareness of and participation in creation - our state of harmony with life and the whole - is also the basis of morality. This principle is represented in astrology by Venus, most basically magnetism, and harmony and immediate relationships. Ultimately "the power of love". Meaning and relation to the whole is represented by Jupiter, which is also the principle of expansion, and creativity - with its fire sign, Sagittarius. Because we have these psychic components or urges, we strive towards perfection according to how we are, or to our perception of the whole; or in other words, according to our competence. This also depends upon our bodily capacity: Spinoza saw that mental ability and physical are two different attributes of the same ability, and this too follows from astrology. Competence scarcely depends upon free-will, but on attunement to nature, or one's state of being, and clarity of vision. "Action, even good action, is not intrinsically important. Only being is of real significance" (Keyserling). This again means perception of reality, which can grow in the measure that we have it - "to him that hath shall be given"; but "to him that hath not..." It is often stated by occultists that higher powers cannot intervene on earth unless humanity asks, or prays, because they may not interfere with human free-will. "Ask and it shall be given unto you". This means that to those who don't ask it cannot be given, that you cannot tell people anything they don't want to know. Their minds are closed, imprisoned in their current concepts and delusions, obsessed with fantasies, and afflicted with blindness. The whole of contemporary civilisation is organised to prevent people from perceiving reality. This can be taken as the result of free-will or the opposite. We are referring to current collective values or the average state of being, and so it is not individual. Being an individual in the proper sense inevitably means going the other way, against the tide, becoming personally responsible, and setting out towards consciousness. "Seek and you shall find". In this case one has the feeling of being helped; one has a "magnetic centre" (Ouspensky-Gurdjieff) and is naturally drawn towards, or attracts, all that is valid in experience. It is a state of being that seems already inherent at birth, like creativity - "you cannot learn to be a composer; you either have it or you don't".18 To what extent can we awaken or come alive voluntarily? The foolish virgins cannot have been foolish by free choice, and it is by general consensus the humane attitude to excuse errors on the ground of unconsciousness - "They know not what they do". This is to deny free-will and to attest that everything comes down to ignorance or awareness. It is more likely that humanity as a whole, on another level or in another reality - the "group soul" or "morphogenetic field" - is undergoing a process of development of which we all represent various stages, while the concept "free-will" seems to be a fictitious attribute of the separative ego, itself a fictitious entity.
The ideas of free-will, causality, responsibility, are hopelessly intertwined and confused. If we have a choice to make and choose the wrong direction, we do not do this by free-will - i.e. deliberately, but because we cannot see far enough. Since the ego is by itself quite myopic and lives in a profound twilight, free-will does not help - its choice is like pinning a tail on the donkey. By going wrong it may learn, which is more likely to be the reason why the gods are reluctant to give free rides; on the other hand "the gods" are within, and if it learns to know them it will go right, even if seemingly "by chance". "Something" will guide it. If it goes wrong, it is again not due to chance but to ignorance, that is to say, to its level of being, to itself, and everything that happens to it is a part of its life as a whole. In other words, it is responsible for all the choices it makes, they are part of it. They are its self-expression, and it may be that in the total scheme of things it is playing a necessary part, even if it is a negative or shadowy part, a part in the metaphysics of good and evil, or as an instrument of Fate, of Saturn-Satan. What shall we say of Hitler, Stalin or Cesare Borgia? They are probably embodiments in human form of something like a plague, personifications of the Black Death, of the archetype Pluto.
Since the perception of meaning is of the inter-relatedness of things and of their relation to the All, it is identical both with the aesthetic experience and with religious experience; that is, an attunement to a higher reality. The best word for it is probably the Chinese word Tao, which is in effect translated by Richard Wilhelm as meaning. To be in accord with the Tao is to be in harmony with the nature of things, and of oneself, which is above all an awareness of meaning, and fitting into it or "letting go". The principle of "not-doing" - an expressive term used in the Castaneda books - is common to all mystical philosophies, or philosophies based upon knowledge of the real world behind phenomena; "consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." The whole feeling behind the concept "free-will" on the other hand is the opposite of this, and implies being busy, "willing", interfering, and preoccupied as an ego, rather than learning, observing and becoming more aware. The disastrous "doing" of humanity at large cannot be countered by more "doing" - "doing something about it" - because doing in itself tends to block awareness, but we can only be, in whatever situation we find ourselves - which does not mean being passive, any more than non-attached (poor in spirit, in the world but not of it) means indifferent. It is an essential part of our nature to act, since the Mars principle is a component of the psyche; but the confusion of this with "will" - another fictitious concept - is a distortion of thinking. If the generation of activity is "willing", then the germination of seeds in the spring must be similarly regarded, taking place as it does under the sign of Mars, Aries.
Action is of course necessary for maintaining oneself and the family, tribe and species. Mars is the principle of the hunter, and the warrior, as well as being the male sexual principle - its glyph is identical with the biological glyph for the male. The other aspect of action, and the real reason for it, is creativity. Astrology exactly reflects this in the pattern in the horoscope of the fire signs and houses. Fire, as well as being intuition, is creativity. The first house, the house of Aries and Mars, is coming into action, birth, germination, and the stirring of new life in the spring, the season of creativity. The next fire house is the fifth, the house of Leo and the Sun. The Sun is the creative principle itself, it is life-energy, and one's innermost essence and nature; and the fifth house is above all the house of creativity, and self-expression and self-fulfillment. It is in the nature of life to expand and be creative, to express the innermost self in the outer world. This is done with us especially through art and crafts, but also through play and sport, a form of the same thing and also included in the area of the fifth house. Dance, even ballet, is an obvious form of play, as very often is music - much of Haydn for example, or to take a piece of pure and scintillating play, the first movement of Beethoven's quartet in B flat, opus 18 No. 6.
"Creativity", we are told, "is the most basic need of all". 17 Creativity is essentially the expression of meaning, of one's own meaning in relation to the world, and of one's perception of meaning in the world, which is the nature of art. Consequently the third fire house is the ninth, the house of Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter. These symbols refer to one's relation to the cosmos, the whole, to the gods, and the ninth house includes religion among its meanings, and higher philosophy. Its planet, Jupiter, or Zeus, is the archetype of meaning. We are told by the same source quoted above, and as a sequence to that quotation: "if a man does not find meaning in life, he will not live, bread or no." Any serious thinking person would subscribe to these statements, and certainly Jung would and did; while the symbolism of astrology completely confirms them. It is in the nature of the human being to create and to look for meaning, and we do not need any mechanical concepts to explain it. We try to fulfill our nature.
The principle of creativity however goes much further than this, and is universal and in the nature of everything. Jung wrote in his essay on synchronicity: "But if they do (occur, i.e. causeless events), then we must regard them as creative acts, as the continuous creation of a pattern that exists from all eternity, repeats itself sporadically, and is not derivable from any known antecedents." 8 "The universe in any terms is always being created". 17 This is the real key to non-determinism. "In a manner of speaking, your bodies blink off and on like lights. Their reality fluctuates, from your standpoint. For that matter, so does the physical universe". This comes from a discarnate, or non-material source. But a very similar picture is proposed by David Bohm, a physicist with advanced ideas.
With regard to the ultimate significance of human creativity, Ouspensky writes: "...our lives have no other meaning at all aside from that process of acquiring knowledge performed by us." He includes all forms of creativity as means of acquiring knowledge. "A thoughtful man ceases to feel painfully the absence of meaning in life only when he realises this, and begins to strive consciously for that for which he strove unconsciously before". Jung would have agreed with this, having emphasised all through his life that becoming conscious is the great purpose of man. In Answer to Job he reasons that God needs man to become self-conscious; or God becomes conscious in man.
In his introduction to Ouspensky's Tertium Organum Claude Bragdon writes: "According to Ouspensky, the dimensionality of space corresponds to the development of consciousness. He would define the fourth dimension as the fourth form of the manifestation of consciousness - the intuitional. This higher, or cosmic, consciousness, at the threshold of which humanity now stands, demands a new logic, something beyond that of Aristotle and Bacon. Hence the title Tertium Organum, the new canon of thought". The logical principle of Aristotle is summed up in the formulae:
A is A
A is not Not-A
Everything is either A or Not-A
That of Bacon in the formulae:
That which was A will be A
That which was Not-A will be Not-A
Everything will be either A or Not-A
Ouspensky suggests that, formulated on this model, although really inexpressible in concepts, the axiom of the new logic would run:
A is both A and Not-A
or: Everything is both A and Not-A
or: Everything is All
Ouspensky defined, better than anyone, the premises and conditions leading up to this new knowledge and consciousness, although he did not arrive at a formulation of its actual terms, categories and language. The nucleus of this new system of thought, based exactly on the principles he foresaw, lies ready to hand in astrology. The Sun and the Moon and the planets are both inside and outside - both A and Not-A; everything is inter-connected, and all cycles correspond. The manifestations in the world around us correspond - have the same meaning - with the events taking place within the psyche (synchronicity), as well as with the configurations of the solar system. These latter constitute the archetypal language of the new logic, revealing astrology, in Rudhyar's words, "as the key to understanding the mysteries of man and the universe."
REFERENCES- Chapter four
1 Jung: "The Visions of Zozimos", Alchemical studies, p.84.
2 Ouspensky: A New Model of the Universe, p.380.
3 Jung: Zozimos - p.65.
4 Jung Alchemical Studies.
5 Fritjof Capra: The Tao of Physics, p.303.
6 H.P. Blavatsky: The SecretDoctrine.
7 Ouspensky: Tertium Organum, pp.142, 143.
8 Jung: "Synchronicity: An acausal connecting Principle.", in Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche, par.967, C.W. Vol.8
9 Ibid, par.915.
10 Ouspensky, Tertium Organum, p.172.
11 Eugen Kolisko: Reincarnation & Other Essays, pp.158, 160 (Kolisko Archive Publication, Bournemouth, England, 1940, 1978.) The essay entitled: "From Darwinism - Whither?" gives an explanation of this idea, and a critique of orthodox theories of, for example, the supposed moulten state of the earth at one time, and the orthodox notions of rock-formation.
12 Ouspensky: T.O. p.126.
13 Ouspensky: T.O. p.163.
14 Ouspensky: "A New Model.." p.47.
15 For an exposition of the metaphysics of the harmonic series see Dane Rudhyar: The Magic of Tone & the Art of Music, Shambhala, 1982.
16 Ibid, p.100.
17 "You create your own reality" - a leading theme in the communications made to Jane Roberts by "Seth". The contents of these communications, in a number of volumes, form a most radical and explicit teaching of the new multidimensional level of knowledge to which our present material world-view has to give way - one which is foreseen and foreshadowed in Ouspensky's Tertium Organum, and independently in different areas by many advanced thinkers and scientists today.
(See Appendix II)
18 The Polish conductor Maksymiuk, in an interview with Elizabeth Lyon, for the Scottish periodical "Art Work", Dec. '85/Jan. '86.
PART THREE
THE PLANETARY ARCHETYPES
CHAPTER FIVE
THE PLANETARY ARCHETYPES I
The Inner Planets.
If in alchemy the prima materia is Mercurius (language), and alchemy in its true meaning was a science of consciousness, this is still more true of astrology, which consists in its entirety of a highly sophisticated and extremely integrated language of symbolism, which has grown out of the collective unconscious over the whole of history. The only route not only to an awareness but discrimination and consciousness of the world of forms and ideas and their connections and manifestation in the material world - in other words to some comprehension of reality and meaning, is language. This does not mean rationalism, or language used in the service of a false, negative or one-sided view of the world which we are apt to associate with descriptions of experiences in words. But it means providing a grid by means of which our experiences of the world can be realistically related to one another and to ourselves, and integrated into a totality with which we are ourselves eventually at one. While thinking is not in the first place linguistic, or the mere manipulation of verbal concepts, but the imagination and association of pictures (ideas) and the relation of the forms we meet in the material world to the archetypes of the collective unconscious (symbolism, the language of art), words are needed to define and make fully conscious these experiences. Words are signs by which we orientate ourselves - Hermes was the god of wayfarers, and herms, originally statues of the god, were provided along the routes as sign-posts for travellers.
Words are the means for codifying and transmitting thought patterns, which are the primary reality, or for embodying the Logos. In the beginning was the Word, as Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun, the first transformer of solar energy; in Rudhyar's simile, electricity. In astrology we have a sign-language of archetypes, and one that is closely related to myth. In his extensive studies of the literature of alchemy Jung came to the conclusion that: "The image of the starry heavens seems to be a visualization of the peculiar nature of the unconscious" 1 , and he saw "mythological motives as structural elements of the psyche". The planets in fact seem to correspond to primary mythological motives and equally to primary functional components in the psyche. They would logically fit the special kind of archetype which Jung found to appear in personified forms, and though the personifications may be varied, like the forms grouped around certain themes in mythology - often explicitly astrological themes - they embody some of the essential meanings connected with the primary archetype.
Neither archetypes nor their meanings are ever constant or clear-cut, as such a character would contradict their nature. They consist of patterns in the thought world, or nuclei of meaning, prior to crystallization into rigid forms in the material world. Once incorporated into a definite object, the archetypal connection of this (its meaning) can only be perceived by re-translating it back into its archetypal context, which can be thought of as perceiving its true content. Moreover, "a kind of fluid inter-penetration belongs to the very nature of all archetypes. They can only be roughly circumscribed at best....It is a well-nigh hopeless undertaking to tear a single archetype out of the living tissue of the psyche; but despite their interwovenness they do form units of meaning that can be apprehended intuitively." 2
Archetypes are the currency of the unconscious, and to be integrated into conscious thinking to a large extent they have to be explained - which is to say interpreted by the use of current language, which can reveal the pattern of meaning by naming some of the different things or concepts associated with each archetype. Thus a principle can be apprehended which can be applied to some aspect of almost anything, but is symbolised especially by particular things, without ever being confined to any definitive meaning. The archetype however provides the connecting link that shows the hidden connections between ideas, both concrete and abstract, which cannot be shown otherwise; for example time, the metal lead, and an old man, or better, ivy, have no connection in ordinary thinking, but have in common an association with the archetype Saturn. In this way a meaning is revealed beyond each separate thing and concept, so that eventually everything comes to be seen in an entirely new light, and in a particular relation to the world of manifestation. There is no limit to this process of interconnecting, which can lead ultimately to a total integration of thinking, both in itself and with the other functions. Astrology thus provides a new (and old) form of language which is the key to entry into and understanding of the world of symbol and meaning. Therefore, as Döbereiner says, we have to tread many paths that have not been trodden for a long time, and avoid many habitual culs-de-sac and one-way streets, so that we have to find our way in a part of the town or a landscape that may be at first confusing and unfamiliar, in which memory gives us no leads. And this new orientation of thought and speech is the real training and exercise involved in learning astrology. 3
We find in practice that the planetary archetypes or principles show the same tendency of interpenetration and interwovenness that Jung ascribes to archetypes generally, and they cannot be circumscribed by definite limits nor described by precise concepts. But they too form nuclei of meaning, and their analysis can give a much more realistic understanding of the functions, and is a corrective to many misconceptions and unreal concepts. When seen as psychological components their relations to one another and to sign and house in the individual horoscope are of the utmost relevance in analysis. The phenomenal integration of astrology as a system of thought shows that it is based on psychological reality. Moreover a proper understanding of the structural principles embodied in a horoscope leads to an understanding of the principles behind all manifestation, for we can see what is in potential and has not yet come into time as material manifestation. We can see furthermore when such manifestation is likely to come about and the conditions pertaining to it. 4
The archetype or functional principle represented by Mercury is one of the most protean of all such primal archetypes. This is even more true of the alchemical Mercurius who, besides being the base matter at the start of the work, is also associated with the end product, as a "living being with a human form, the filius philosophorum, who is often depicted as a youth or hermaphrodite child....This being ascends and descends and unites Below with Above, gaining a new power which carries its effect over into everyday life." 5 This corresponds to the role of psychopomp assigned in astrology to Mercury, who is also androgynous, and to the Greek god Hermes, as messenger of the gods, and helper of gods and heroes. Mercury, the intellect, or conscious mind, connecting with the unconscious, is the agent of the Conjunctio, the uniting of the King and Queen, and is itself hermaphrodite or neutral. Unconscious contents must be integrated with consciousness to "find redemption", or be fertile. The dual nature of Mercury can here be seen as the brother-sister pair, which can beget the self.
We also see Mercury as the child, or Puer Aeternus, a regularly recurring form of this archetype. "As the little star near the Sun he is the child of the Sun and Moon" 6 It is the child that is close to the unconscious and so close to nature, more natural. The Christ-child is the most familiar form of this in our culture: "All uniting symbols have a redemptive significance". 7 It is also the lapis philosophorum that transforms lead into gold, but is not the gold itself; it is a pre-figuration of the self, as a possibility, its close attendant and mediator. "Thanks to the religious interpretation of the 'child', a fair amount of evidence has come down to us from the Middle Ages showing that the 'child' was not merely a traditional figure, but a vision spontaneously experienced (as a so-called 'irruption of the unconscious'). I would mention Meister Eckhart's vision of the 'naked boy'.." 8 The child motif is common in dreams and fantasies, and in the pre-individuation process: "Sometimes the child appears in the cup of a flower, or out of a golden egg, or as the centre of a mandala". 9 The child represents the dawn of true consciousness. "It is a wonder child, a divine child, begotten, born and brought up in quite extraordinary circumstances, and not - this is the point - a human child." "It is anything but rational or concretely human. The same is true of the 'father' and 'mother' archetypes which, mythologically speaking, are equally irrational symbols." 10 "Nothing in all the world welcomes this new birth, although it is the most precious fruit of Mother Nature herself, the most pregnant with the future, signifying a higher stage of self-realization." 11 "Higher consciousness, or knowledge going beyond our present day consciousness, is equivalent to being all alone in the world." 12 The child "is a personification of vital forces quite outside the limited range of our conscious mind: of ways and possibilities of which our one-sided conscious mind knows nothing: a wholeness which embraces the very depths of Nature." 13
As consciousness, Mercury is Saturn's child, for Saturn is a symbol for the conscious ego, and is sometimes known as Mercurius senex. "Saturn is the father and origin of Mercurius". 12 The mother is equivalent to the collective unconscious, the son to consciousness, which fancies itself free, but is not. Mercury as son of Saturn and the Moon, the father and mother archetypes, or consciousness and libido, is perception and comprehension as well as language, which is the medium of consciousness, the mediator and connecting link between perceptions and experiences, the nerve- channel - hence the association of this planetary archetype with the nervous system, and nerve impulses (electricity). Hermes replaced the nerves of Zeus.
In Gemini Mercury first becomes conscious of the environment and learns to discern and differentiate between the objects of consciousness by giving names to them and so inventing language. In many mythologies, such as the Kalevala, and fairy tales (Grimm's tale of Rumpelstiltskin), the naming of something is a kind of magic which means getting power over it. The Greek god Hermes invented the alphabet, and through the use of language and writing invented astronomy, the musical scale, weights and measures, the things it names - in short the whole development of science and knowledge is only possible with the advent of language and by naming things. The same is true of religious teachings, and of mythology itself, which have to be propagated through speech and words to become the property of the conscious mind. In Virgo then we have Mercury in its aspect of discrimination and classification of the phenomenal world.
In Gemini however Mercury, instead of being a uniting symbol, can have its dualistic aspect, since it is language in the form of conceptual thinking that can split off as an autonomous complex and lose all touch with the thing it names, or with life and reality. In this form it becomes compulsively attached to the phenomenal world, losing contact with the unconscious and the world of archetypes - the dark twin, or the mortal one of the pair. Thus another form of Mercury is the Trickster archetype - like Puck or Robin Goodfellow, "a very slippery and mischievous demon" (Liz Greene) who leads men astray in the dark night, with false lights, just as reasoning used by itself is always doing. As Puck (seen especially in the painting by Richard Dadd), the child is united with the trickster. Hermes himself, as a little boy, and not long after birth, slipped away from his mother and went off to steal the cattle of Apollo. As Ariel in The Tempest this figure appears specifically associated with air, the element of thinking, as Hermes was with the wind. As trickster Mercurius "is duplex and his main characteristic is duplicity". 15 He is many-sided, changeable and deceitful. He is morally neutral, good and evil. He can be both animal and divine. His gradual development into a saviour represents the transformation of the meaningless into the meaningful. On one side he is the shadow, a character-component both sub-human and super-human. All clowns play this dual role of ridiculing and redeeming. "Hermes is a god of thieves and cheats, but also a god of revelation who gave his name to a whole philosophy." Jung is here referring to Hermes Trismegistus, the mysterious author of the Tabula Smaragdina, which encapsulates the doctrine of correspondences, "as above, so below", the logic which is basic to both alchemy and astrology, and the key to a new order.
"Seen in historical retrospect, it was a moment of the utmost significance when the humanist Patrizi proposed to Pope Gregory XIV that Hermetic philosophy should take the place of Aristotle in ecclesiastical doctrine. At that moment two worlds came into contact, which - after heaven knows what happenings! - must yet be united in the future." 16
The primary form of the Hermetic doctrine of "As above so below" is the astrological one of correspondence between the macrocosm of the solar system and the zodiac and the microcosm of the human being, both bodily in terms of cosmic man, and spiritually in terms of the psychological archetypes. Referring to alchemy Jung wrote:
"The stages of the work are marked by seven colours which are associated with the planets. This accounts for the relation of the colours to astrology, and also to psychology, since the planets correspond to individual character components." 17
In the solar system the Sun is the ruling deity. All the planets are powered and illuminated by the Sun, and revolve around it. All are in their various orbits and tones mediators of the Sun, or transformers of solar energy - one might say functions of the Sun. They all refer to the Sun and are aspects of the solar Logos, therefore they all contain a solar ingredient, and their functions relate to the Sun on the one hand, and to the means and levels of its fulfillment in terms of life on earth on the other. The fact that they have a solar aspect does not make them symbols of the actual Sun, but is part of the reason for the fluidity and interchangeability of the archetypes, as mentioned by Jung, since they are all related together and part of the same solar system. They are part of the same chord, and related by different intervals to the fundamental.
This also has to be understood in relating mythological motifs to the planetary archetypes; "solar heroes" do not have to be forms or symbols of the Sun itself, nor the divine child, nor the many other forms of Mercurius in alchemy, though constituting a prefiguration of the gold, or the means of attaining to it, be considered as representing the gold itself. The Sun is the central fire and the animating principle or life-giver; in astrological terms its sign is Leo, which rules the heart. But there are two other fire signs and planets assciated with them, Aries with Mars, and Sagittarius with Jupiter. These two are very much connected with the solar principle, and for this reason their mythological and psychological associations are often attributed to the Sun by astrologers, causing much confusion. The Sun in astrology is often associated with consciousness, reason, will, goals and ego, but we can only get a clear idea of each of the planetary archetypes by considering them all together, and how they relate to one another in one system, as well as how they are illuminated by mythical archetypes, and eventually how they relate to Jung's psychological components. Like all archetypes they are so inter-related that much confusion prevails in this area, even among the best astrologers, and it is not at all easy to sort things out.
The planetary principles or psychic components form various pairs, according to the context in which we are considering them, and we cannot understand them without referring to these pairs and their particular implications. Sun and Moon are the most obvious pair, without astrology being needed at all; but we also have to understand Sun-Saturn as a pair, and Moon-Saturn, Mercury-Jupiter or Mercury-Saturn, and ultimately the relation of every planetary principle to each of the others in turn, as well as to the whole system and to us, as microcosms of the system. It is impossible therefore to take them one at a time and sort out separate categories of ideas exclusively connected with each. We cannot very well discuss form except in relation to content, or vice-versa, or light except in relation to darkness, and they can only be understood in terms of polarities, which are various; that is, each can constitute one pole of more than one pair. This is the same as saying that all the planets can form oppositions with one another, except that Mercury and Venus can never be in opposition to the Sun nor to one another, being inside the earth's orbit.
The idea that the Sun is to be associated with consciousness seems plausible in view of the fact that the Sun reigns by day and provides daylight, which is a condition for consciousness; whereas the Moon, ruling the night, with its pale, mysterious or ghostly light, merging outlines and blurring definitions, and making colours indistinguishable, is associated with the unconscious and instinctual. "Just as the day-star rises out of the nocturnal sea, so, onto- and phylogenetically, consciousness is born of unconsciousness and sinks back every night to this primal condition." 18 Jung is writing on the symbolism of the Sol-Luna pair in alchemy. Sol is also the "King", and equating this with the Sun: "The refulgent body of the Sun is the ego and its field of consciousness". 19
On the other hand in Jung's terminology the ego is merely the individual centre of consciousness, and as such is an altogether provisional and arbitrary entity, of very variable degree, depending entirely upon the individual's level of development for its quality. It is only a minority part - one third, it is said - of the whole psyche, comparable to the portion of an iceberg that appears above water. In any case it is limited to the individual's awareness of his or her self as an entity in a particular material incarnation, with a particular history and a particular set of experiences of the material world, among other such entities. The Sun on the other hand is the source of creative energy, it is the life-giving principle and heart of our world, and for all life on earth. It is not confined to an individual incarnation, nor is it individually definable, nor conceivable in any sense as a structure or particular form. It is radiant, and in no sense limited. Consciousness as such is quite a different concept, and can only be understood in the context of the Sun-Saturn polarity. Jung gets over this difficulty by arguing that consciousness is the ultimate aim of the creative principle, or of the spirit in man: "I have defined the self as the totality of the conscious and unconscious psyche, and the ego as the central reference point of consciousness. It is an essential part of the self, and can be used pars pro toto when the significance of consciousness is born in mind". 20 Two pages earlier he wrote:
In view of the supreme importance of the ego in bringing reality to light, we can understand why this infinitesimal speck in the universe was personified as the sun, with all the atributes that this image implies. As the medieval mind was incomparably more alive than ours to the divine quality of the sun, we may assume that the totality character of the sun-image was implicit in all its allegorical or symbolic applications. Among the significations of the sun as totality the most important was its frequent use as a God-image, not only in pagan times but in the sphere of Christianity as well." 21
The ego, as consciousness of one's separation as an individual, amounts in the first place to an awareness of the basic polarities of self-other, body-mind, male-female, that was born with expulsion from paradise, or the fall into materiality and the world of time and polarity, of Satan/Saturn, and the knowledge of good and evil. It is an awareness of limitations, not of totality, of boundaries and definitions, of light contrasted with darkness, which is the essence of consciousness, to be developed into a discrimination of the ten thousand things, in their differentiation from the One. It is a knowledge of differences, tensions and conflicts (mechanics), of the outside world of sense-perception, so that ego-consciousness represents the extravert polarity, the world of separate objects and egos. But just as for us knowledge of the outside world depends very largely upon sight, and therefore light, and the body depends on mind and vitality or the life-force, so consciousness has to be informed with the unifying principle of spirit. The Sun is the inner pole of spirit; it is not just the individual self but the life-giving principle, which is "one with the continuity of all life". Consciousness arises from both poles - "God needs man to become conscious" (Jung on Job). In our present condition however: "Consciousness thinks it's running the shop. But it's a secondary organ of the total human being, and must not put itself in control. It must submit and serve the humanity of the body". 22 And: "The individual content of consciousness...has diffferentiated the universal to the point of unrecognisability"; 23 while, at the solar pole: "You see not the world of solid things but a world of radiance". 22
Jung writes of "the 'inner sun', the archetype of transcendent wholeness - the self", whereas consciousness, implying separateness, is represented by the human father (Saturn). 24 "The sun is a symbol of the source of life and the ultimate wholeness of man" 25 and "The centre with a circle is a very well-known allegory of the nature of God. In the philosophy of the Upanishads the Self is in one aspect the personal atman, but at the same time it has a cosmic and metaphyscial quality as the suprapersonal Atman". 26 For atman we may read spirit. "The sun is the image of God, the heart (Leo) is the sun's image in man". 27 On the other hand: "the ego can be no more than the centre of the field of consciousness", and: "the unconscious displays contents that are utterly different from consciousness". 28
When we speak of true individuality or "individuation", we refer to a synthesis of ego and Self, or the real self informing consciousness, an individual who is in touch with his Sun, or inner values. On the other hand, if the ego is merely mistaken for and identified with the self, we have inflation, a very different, and pathological condition.
Thus in astrology while the Sun is not the ego, it does relate to consciousness, but to the solar aim of bringing the spirit into consciousness. Individuation means "Know thyself", or knowledge of God, the emphasis being equally on knowledge as on God. The Sun in the horoscope is the god within, or the incarnating Monad, or the potentiality of spiritual realisation. According to Rudhyar, the Sun is "the point of emanation of the self", the whole horoscope representing the self or totality of the psyche; while Döbereiner refers to the Sun, and its position as to sign and house, as indicating the way in which the self is experienced, the task to be performed for deliverance, and the only way of achieving one's dharma. This is echoed by Liz Greene when she says: "The sense of an inner self, independent of the body, is reflected in astrology by the Sun". 29 And Rudhyar says: "I am what I am as a self; the fundamental Tone of my field of existence remains identical from birth to death". The quality of this Tone, in terms of the twelve tones of the scale or Zodiac, is shown by the Sun's sign at birth.
As spirit the Sun cannot be personified, and all personifications of an ultimate God, or of the All, are absurd, or at best primitive and childish. In psychological terms the Self is not a component of the psyche but the whole thing; it is not a character in a drama but the animating principle behind all the characters. Therefore it is alluded to by the unconscious as a mandala or a circle, as symbol of wholeness. In manifestation on Earth it is a quaternity, or a cross in a circle, representing the spirit incarnated in matter. The name of God cannot be spoken, but it has four letters; in the transcendent realm it is represented by a trinity.
The outer Sun, centre of the solar system, is the source of life, energy and light, the prerequisite of consciousness, for everything on Earth, and is therefore God for us, the god without, as the horoscopical Sun is the god within. On higher gods we can only speculate, on the Galactic Centre, on the Sun Absolute, or on Brahma. It is logical to equate spirit with light, the highest form of energy we know, and as we have seen, a phenomenon of the sixth dimension, radiant and immaterial. Many cultures and religions much closer to the source than we are today have recognised this, and in our own Christian religion Christ has been recognised as the solar Logos. We have only to remember that decisive spiritual experiences and sudden revelations are so often accompanied or preceded by the sensation of blinding light; so that we shall not find it strange that one of the great spirits of our culture in recent times, who worked with light, J.M.W. Turner, said on his deathbed: "The Sun is God". The last words of his parallel spirit Beethoven were "More light", recalling the first protocol of creation: "Let there be light".
In the horoscope we have to understand the solar principle as the motivating force behind all the other factors, which provide the attributes for the Sun's goal of self-realisation. These attributes and functions therefore can best be understood in their relation to the Sun, first in general terms and then under the particular circumstances of each individual horoscope. In the latter case their situation in house and sign and their aspects to one another show the stage we are at, the particular route to be taken and the obstacles to be overcome in this journey which, idealised, can be compared with the task to be fulfilled by the mythic hero. He is often referred to as a solar hero, since he is blazing the trail of self-realisation; he is about the business of the Sun, a knight errant, or a knight of the Holy Grail. He is demonstrating the dragons to be overcome on the road to self-fulfillment, symbols of the psychological problems of growth and maturing as an independent and self-conscious individual. The particular nature and forms of these dragons in individual cases and their relative formidability, as monsters lurking in caves or labyrinths of the unconscious, are shown by the planets and their aspects, and their relation to the psychological functions.
Parallel with the Sun in importance in determining the basic character of a person, and likewise not a planet, is the Ascendant of the horoscope, or the point marking the Eastern horizon at birth. This depends on the exact time and place of birth, and is not only decisive in itself but is the determinant for the lay-out of the whole horoscope in terms of houses, and consequently for the placement of the planets in the areas of individual development. The Ascendant is the point or moment of incarnation as an independent physical entity, and is taken from the moment of the first breath of the new-born infant. The zodiacal sign on the Eastern horizon and any planets rising at the time or soon to rise, that is, close to the Ascendant, are very decisive for the life of the new-born person, and in marking both character and destiny, in terms of the lay-out of the other houses.
We may well wonder which of these factors, Sun or Ascendant, is the more important, and even the placement by house of the Sun depends upon the Ascendant. The Sun's sign depends upon the time of year, and that of the Ascendant upon the time of day at the place of birth. The revolution of the Earth on its own axis corresponds with its revolution around the Sun, since all cycles are of comparable phases. In a sense therefore the degree of the Zodiac where we see the Sun when it rises in the East at dawn is very comparable with the degree which is rising at birth, or the dawn of the individual; and not only the sign but the exact degree is significant. They are related in the proportion of a day for a year, which is the same ratio or correspondence that is operative in plotting the progressed horoscope. They are symbolically equivalent. We can say that the dawn of the day is comparable to the spring equinox as the dawn of the year. The Ascendant is the same thing in diminution, and applies to the more immediate circumstances of a particular incarnation, while the Sun indicates a larger and longer period, or a more enduring component. The Ascendant is in fact an expression of the relation of the earth to the Sun.
Again not being a planet, the Ascendant is not likely to be or is not comparable to a personifiable archetype, and so is not to be regarded in the same light as a function of the psyche. The Ascendant has no regular nature or mode of functioning like a planet which is a feature of all horoscopes, but it can be anything or any degree of the Zodiac. As a sign of the Zodiac it does have a planet associated with it, which of course can be any planet. This planet, the ruler of the rising sign, is called the ruler of the Ascendant, or the ruler of the horoscope, and has an especially important or dominant role to play, as it represents the rising sign, but can be situated anywhere in the houses and signs. The sign of the Ascendant and its planet are very conspicuous in the person's character, and usually still more so in the physical appearance. It clearly represents the outer characteristics, and the way on the whole that the person reacts in relation to the outer world and environment. To put a psychological term on this is not easy, especially as these are sometimes not clearly defined. Personality is sometimes suggested, but it is difficult to separate a person's personality from the Sun-sign, which usually seems more relevant. Among Jung's definitions at the end of Psychological Types the most suitable term might be attitude. "For us", he says, "attitude is a readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way". What Jung calls individuality would refer to the Sun.
One of the astrologers today who most understands these things, Liz Greene, refers to the Ascendant as the development pattern, and the Sun as the essential core of character. The Ascendant, she says, "helps us to learn certain lessons or attributes to help us become what is symbolised by the Sun". Taking a solar hero as an example, such as Theseus, his quest is the Sun, but the skills he must develop to attain it are represented by the Ascendant. "We seem to intuit that we will be required to develop its qualities....So we acquire a kind of beginner's version of it in the first half of life, an outer mask which often fits all the text-book descriptions....It feels somehow alien and is often projected onto the immediate environment....When we express the Sun, we feel authentic." 29
Another of the most advanced and interesting of present astrologers, Wolfgang Döbereiner in Munich, who has developed his own original methods of interpreting the horoscope under the title of "The Munich Rhythm Theory", puts great stress on the Ascendant and its ruling planet, as indicating one's endowed attributes, which he calls die Anlage. The Sun is die Verhaltung, or the mode of behaviour, or the means of execution, for fulfilling the endowment. It
"indicates the behavioural characteristics and, therefore, the way in which the person transmits his endowment to the outside world. The position of the Sun, therefore, is always the most fundamental and most decisive element....Second in importance is the Ascendant. And here, the decisive factor is whether the behavioural mode, that is, the Sun, is capable of doing justice to the Ascendant, that is, to the person's endowment or aptitudes, without being overtaxed, or undertaxed, in the process". 30
If we then take the word attributes, or aptitudes, for what is shown by the Ascendant, this agrees with both these important and unquestionably leading thinkers in astrology, and also with experience. Whether we look on our attributes as helping us to become our Sun, or the other way round, does not make very much difference. The attributes are probably the talents we have to develop in this life, and the Sun as our inner nature probably determines the way we behave or the direction in which we use these attributes. If the Ascendant is in a sign representing the inferior function, these attributes are likely to become associated with the shadow, and show some of their negative side.
The most basic and obvious polarity in nature, the heavenly powers that govern all life and its rhythms on earth, and so the prime source of mythologies and religions from the earliest times, are the Sun and Moon. Taken as a pair there are so many significant things about them, both as symbols and as outer realities, that they are also basic to astrology, the mythology of the future, and form a pattern for its philosophy. The phases of the Moon are the archetypal and manifest demonstration of cyclic processes, in its relation to the Earth and to the Sun.
The Moon is the primordial symbol of the feminine, the Great Goddess appearing in so many forms, taking precedence in many cultures as the symbol of Nature, the mother, and origins. The Moon rules the sign of Cancer, the watery element where life is nurtured - the basis of life - and later the womb. The sub-lunar sphere is the womb for life on earth, the Moon rules the maternal waters where life arose, and the principle that pervades and permeates all life on earth. It is the feminine principle of fluidity, of yielding and flowing, the contents of forms, cells and vessels, and probably the principle of colloids, "the medium in which life is found". 29 "The maternal significance of water is one of the clearest interpretations of symbols in the whole field of mythology". 60 One of the best astrological accounts of the "multidimensional symbol of the Moon" is given by Liz Greene. 30 Considering the Sun and Moon pair "we think of the Moon in relation to change, material life, and the cycles of the body and the instinctual nature", as flux and impermanence, while the Sun is constant, "the essential self, which hopefully grows in consciousness during a lifetime (like the mythic hero), but..gives us our sense of continuity and permanent identity. A sense of eternity, the spark of spirit incarnated in the lunar physical form". It is the "interaction between a changing, receptive principle and a constant, radiant principle".
The Moon is the world of nature, the unconscious which gives birth to consciousness. It stands for the values of the herd and the species rather than the individual, and has no other ethics or principles. This connection with the body and the herd explains the association of the Moon with the sign Taurus, in which it is said to be "exalted". It is from the Sun and Saturn we have individual values: "The differentiation of the self from fusion with the world of mother, nature and collective allows us to develop reason, will, power and choice." 30
In its association with water and the unconscious the Moon symbolises emotional energy, which Jung calls libido, and this can be equated with the life-force, or "etheric energy", the formative field surrounding living organisms and the innermost layer of the aura. It has been identified in biology as the "morphogenetic field" (Sheldrake), and is the energetic pattern controlling the materialisation, formation, maintenance and reparation of the body. It is common to the species and is not individual. While the original source of all energy is the Sun, the Sun's energy is fire, and has to be transformed for utilisation by life on earth and in the watery medium - it is symbolically reflected and transmitted by the Moon, as the mother of life, or changed from nuclear radiation to pra–a. This only happens on earth (as far as our solar system is concerned). The alchemists understood this, and Jung quotes in Mysterium Conjunctionis: "The moon..is the demarcation between the divine and the mortal" and "The realm of the perishable begins with the moon and goes downwards" (Macrobius). The Moon is "the author and contrivor of mortal bodies". 32
The stages of energy transformation may be represented, or symbolised, by Mercury, associated by Rudhyar with electricity, and Venus, with magnetism. The life-force, as discovered by Mesmer (1776), was known as "animal magnetism". According to Pico della Mirandola, Luna "has an affinity with Venus, as is particularly to be seen from the fact that she is sublimated in Taurus, the House of Venus, so much that she nowhere else appears more auspicious and more beneficent." 33 Rodney Collin calls the Moon "the great magnet of all nature", and writes: "the magnetic bodies of all living things are sustained and produced by the Moon, and given form and variety by the planets". "Every organism has a magnetic body in addition to its physical one". This is the same as the "etheric body" or "life-body", and we can read "etheric" for "magnetic". This is not as fanciful as might be supposed, and Collin reasons from physical evidence that "the combined magnetic influence of the Moon and the planets must create form on earth". Again we find an almost identical statement by an alchemist, Mennens: "But the Moon, being the lowest of the planets, is said to conceive like a womb the virtues of all the stars, and then to bestown them on sublunary things". 34 The further statement that "the magnetic fields of all living things are drawn to the Moon ten minutes after death" 35 may be compared with: "When the mind had become freed from death, it became the moon" - quoted by Jung from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. 36 Rodney Collin shows that if we look at the "long body" of the solar system, that is, in a higher dimension of time, it has the exact form and nature of an electrical polyphase transformer: 37 and he shows further by ingenious analogies with electrical science as well as physics that the Moon can be seen in different ways as in fact, even in mechanical terms, the sustainer of organic life. At the same time it is without life itself, and resembles mediaeval descriptions of hell, consisting of eternal fire, in the parts exposed to the Sun, and eternal cold in the rest. It is all black and white, like a black and white photograph, and there is no colour on it, and no change. Time does not bring change, since it does not rotate. It has no atmosphere, and no matter above the mineral state, and so no movement.
On the other hand on earth the Moon controls life and movement and is one of the chief determinants of time: the Earth's rotation marking the day, the Moon the month, the Sun's cycle of the Zodiac the year, and the planetary orbits marking larger sycles in the lifetime of man, in numbers of years. Similarly if we compare these four factors with the four elements or states of being, we can say that the earth controls or is associated with, the solid state, the Moon with liquids, the planets with the gaseous or molecular state, and the Sun with electronic or radiant energy, that is, fire.
Rationalists are fond of "facts", but for anyone who looks seriously at the facts and figures pertaining to the Moon it is impossible to remain a rationalist, or a devotee of mechanical causality. To take merely the fact that the Sun and Moon, representing the polarity they do and ruling the day and the night, are at certain eclipses and viewed from the Earth exactly the same size - to take this as a chance occurrence of no significance is to stretch credulity to near breaking point. The Earth is the only planet with a moon anything like this one, single and unique, and one quarter of its own diameter. It can be classed neither as a satellite nor a planet; it is outside the Earth's gravity, being two times more attracted by the Sun, yet it remains circular in orbit. It always presents the same face to the Earth, and the tides it produces are just right: if the Moon were 5% closer, huge areas would be flooded; and this fits in with its low density, which is half that of the Earth. It circles the Earth twelve and one third times in the year, the number of signs of the Zodiac, and conforming to the duodecimal division that runs all through creation. Its synodic period, from new moon to new moon, is twenty nine and a half days, the exact average orbital period in years of Saturn, with which the Moon makes a very important pair or polarity, as we shall see, in astrology. Its sidereal period, when it returns to the same position in the Zodiac, is 27.3 days, a number with remarkable significance. For one thing, it is the exact period of human ovulation; the mean diameter of the Moon is 27.3% that of the earth, and this figure represents the cube of three. The menstrual cycle, nine months, is the square of three, and the Saros cycle, of eclipses, or the Moon's nodes, is eighteen years, or twice nine. Rudolf Steiner has pointed out that corresponding to the lunar cycle of 28 - 30 days, man has 28 - 30 vertebrae and spinal nerves, and there are 28 - 30 threads from the optic nerve to the eye; twelve strands in the olfactory nerve to the nose, and twelve nerves from the brain; while a final coincidence that it is "impossible to believe to be accidental" is that "when allowance is made for the motion of the Earth, the speed of the Moon's revolution round the latter in 27.3 days in found to be exactly the speed of the Sun's rotation on its own axis in 25.3 days." 38
In the horoscope Cancer and the Moon are archetypally associated with the fourth house, and supply its basic meanings. If the Moon is psychic energy or emotional energy, here it seeps out of the earth and becomes conscious. Döbereiner calls water the effective truth in man, the unconscious, and it washes up on the shores of consciousness. Cancer is the source, and a brook, or a swiftly flowing stream. The fourth house represents the gathering of emotional energy, associated in the unconscious with archetypal ideas. We find very much the same concept in Carter:
"In Cancer we see the progeny of Taurus, the Great Mother, the myriad archetypal Ideas brought down through the intellect of Gemini into the seething Ocean of generation. Cancer is Form, but, at this stage, the forms are very fluidic; they are destined to become concrete and particular in Capricornus." 39
In Leo, and the fifth house, ruled by the Sun, we reach the stage of creativity on an individual basis, applying the unconscious energy and archetypes to what is encountered in the outside world (Döbereiner). Liz Greene says: "The solar inner self depends upon the Moon for experience, precipitated by emotional need." 40
The Sun-Moon polarity is fundamentally that of spirit and the world of Nature, or the values of potential individual self-consciousness as opposed to the instinctual and collective. It is often represented as male-female, or conscious and unconscious, but this is not strictly correct. In the first place, while the Moon in astrology is unquestionably the mother archetype, and the wife, and woman generally, and the unconscious side of life, the Sun is not one sex or the other. We all have both a lunar and a solar side, and the female sex is generally more in touch with the instinctual and natural and lunar part of our nature, and is biologically connected with motherhood. It does not follow that men are more in touch with their real selves or the spirit, nor that they are more individual; one might think from observation that they are less so. As for consciousness, it is true that socially men have been generally occupied with conscious and analytical affairs more than with family and biological ones; with social organization, rational thinking, self-assertion and so on. But all this comes under Saturn and collective consciousness, not real individual consciousness; while the exaltation of reason in the form of rationalism is more (three quarters) unconsciousness in its one-sidedness. We can say that the Sun and Moon represent the Logos and Eros. Light is necessary for consciousness but does not equate with it. Real creativity has to start from Cancer and the feminine side, and only then can it become truly solar in Leo, and individual (not masculine).
The Sun and Moon are often taken as the father and mother imagos. Jung writes: "The visible father of the world is the Sun", therefore "father, God, sun, fire are mythological synonyms". 41 The inner and physical worlds are modelled on the cosmos of eternal ideas. The Sun is only father in the sense in which God is spoken of as "the Father", that is, as a figure of speech, and in the context of a patriarchal society, for it is actually, in human and biological terms, the mother who is the source of life. In some cultures the Moon is masculine and the Sun feminine. The human father is Saturn, and to speak of either God or the Sun as the Father only means that the spirit is one, within and without, and has nothing to do with gender. Jung quotes from John: "I and the Father are one" (10:30); "I am in the Father and the Father in me" (14:11); "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God". (20:17) 42 To see Mercury as the child of the Sun and Moon is to say that consciousness arises from the conjunctio of spirit and body; or, as in alchemy, the King and the Queen give birth to Mercurius, the divine child, and also "the mediator between body and spirit". 43 At the same time the human father is in one sense an analogy of the Sun and its family of planets, the nucleus and its electrons. In astrological practice the Sun in the horoscope sometimes symbolises the father, but only in the case of a child who has not attained to its own identity. In this case it may identify with father, who may seem like a projected Sun for it. In general Jung says that "The self is so far removed from consciousness that it can only be partially expressed by human figures". 44 These are, as "supraordinate personalities", father and son in a man, but in a woman mother and daughter, and generally King or Queen; but more generally it takes the form of theriomorphic or plant symbols - such as the lotus flower - or geometrical figures, circles or squares of many kinds.
Much has been written on the mythological forms of the Goddess, and Jung wrote: "The mythology of the moon is an object lesson in female psychology". 45 This has been the special focus of Liz Greene in "The Luminaries". Moon goddesses of every kind are to be found, from Isis, who becomes a triple moon goddess, or Eve, a primordial mother as a purely biological and earth figure, "the Mother of All Living" (Graves), or as world mother or anima mundi. Joseph Campbell found that the primacy of the Goddess was associated with agricultural societies. "It has to do with earth", and "gives birth to forms and nourishes forms". In Greece Demeter was this kind of goddess, a corn goddess, while Hera, the twin sister and consort of Zeus, was the pre-hellenic Great Goddess, and Goddess of the vegetative year and Moon Goddess. She became the established social mother-figure, belonging to the astrological fourth house. Robert Graves tells us:
The whole of neolithic Europe, to judge from the surviving artefacts and myths, had a remarkably homogeneous system of religious ideas, based on worship of the many-titled Mother-goddess who was also known in Syria and Libya. Ancient Europe had no gods. The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless and omnipotent, and the concept of fatherhood had not been introduced into religious thought.....Not only the moon, but (to judge from Hemera of Greece and Gráinne of Ireland) the sun, were the goddesses celestial symbols. In earlier Greek myth, however, the sun yields precedence to the moon - which inspires the greater superstitious fear, does not grow dimmer as the year wanes, and is credited with the power to grant or deny water to the fields.
The moon's three phases of new, full and old recalled the matriarch's three phases of maiden, nymph (nubile woman) and crone. (The Greek Myths. pp 13, 14)
The three phases become differentiated into other goddesses, showing different sides of the feminine psyche; Selene, sister of Helios, the Sun; Artemis, twin sister of Apollo, the Sun's light; and Diana, three forms of the goddess having a lot in common and having an affinity with virgin and untamed, ruthless Nature. They represent the dangerous quality of the New Moon, the dark of the Moon at conjunction - a danger born out objectively and in practice in certain areas, such as performing surgery during the three days preceding the New Moon. Jung refers to "the chthonic femininity of the unconscious", represented in myth by Hecate, or the chthonic Persephone _ "the Daemonic quality which is connected with the dark side of the moon". 46 "The moon, standing on the borders of the sublunary world ruled by evil, has a share not only in the world of light but also in the daemonic world of darkness" 48 "the devil, or the activated darkness of matter" 49 "The moment of the eclipse and mystic magic is death on the cross". 50
Elsewhere, in the context of interpreting a particular dream, Jung gives a remarkable description of the Mother archetype which exactly fits the astrological meanings associated with the Moon, and even with the fourth house:
"Mother" is an archetype and refers to the place of origin, to nature, to that which passively creates, hence to substance and matter, to materiality, the womb, the vegetative functions. It also means the unconscious, our natural and instinctive life, the physiological realm, the body in which we dwell or are contained; for the "mother" is also the matrix, the hollow form, the vessel that carries and nourishes, and it thus stands psychologically for the foundations of consciousness. Being inside or contained in something also suggests darkness, something nocturnal and fearful, hemming one in....
The word "mother", which sounds so familiar, apparently refers to the best-known, the individual mother - to "my mother". But the mother symbol points to a darker background which eludes conceptual formulation and can only be vaguely apprehended as the hidden, nature-bound life of the body. Yet even this is too narrow and excludes too many vital subsidiary meanings. The underlying, primary psychic reality is so inconceivably complex that it can be grasped only at the furthest reach of intuition, and then but very dimly. That is why it needs symbols. 51
The Mother, on the dark side, can become the all-devouring mother, or dragon to be overcome. It is the personal, or the archetypal mother from whom one has to separate to become psychologically independent, to realise one's individual Sun. "Many people become stuck there (at this threshold), battling the mother-dragon all their lives" (Liz Greene). In this dimension, as the "Terrible Mother", the archetype begins to merge with Pluto, and becomes a triplicity as the Three Fates, or the Three Norns.
The three-fold aspect of the archetype, as maiden, mother and Hecate, is most clearly personified in Demeter, whose daughter Kore is kidnapped by Hades to become his consort, or Queen of the Night, as Persephone. Another form of Persephone (the chthonic Persephone) is Hecate, the real "crone". Persephone still spends two thirds of the year (the growing season) in the upper, daylight world, by decree of Zeus. Jung relates the "Kore" to both the self and the anima; in a woman she belongs to the self type (the supraordinate personality), in a man to the anima type. All psychic figures are bi-polar; thus Faust's supraordinate personality could appear as Mephistopheles. Kore in a woman is a mother or a maiden. She can appear as an unknown girl, or often as Gretchen or unmarried mother; often she is the dancer (nymph, maenad etc.) or a nixie or water-sprite. She can even descend to the animal kingdom and be a cat, snake or bear, crocodile or salamander. "The figures corresponding to Demeter and Hecate are supraordinate, not to say over-life-size "Mothers" ranging from the Pietà type to the Baubo type". 52 "The Earth Mother is always chthonic and is occasionally related to the Moon...". "Demeter and Kore, mother and daughter, extend the feminine consciousness both upwards and downwards. They add an 'older and younger', 'stronger and weaker' dimension to it..." 53 But the real meaning of the figure gets lost in reductive (personalistic) interpretations. "Although the anima can...experience herself in Demeter-Kore, she is yet of a wholly different nature. She is in the highest degree femme-ˆ-homme,, whereas Demeter-Kore exists on the plane of mother-daughter experience, which is alien to man and shuts him out". 54
Here we are at the intermediate zone where one archetype merges into another. There is no clear line of demarcation, either in mythology, astrology or psychological practice or experience, and yet they are "of a wholly different nature". Jung refers to "the anima which in a man's psychology invariably appears at first mingled with the mother-image", 55 and a mother-complex can develop into an anima-complex, or exist in parallel with it, even though the manifestations of each are separate and characteristic. Here we are talking of the two principal archetypes of the feminine pole, in astrology the Moon and Venus, and we have already seen that they have a close relationship and affinity through the sign Taurus. This is one of the signs ruled by Venus, and the one where the Moon has her 'exaltation', which implies a very special and fundamental affinity, in her rôle of Earth-Mother. One could even say much about the explicit associations between the 'horned' or crescent Moon and Taurus, and the Moon goddess Isis whose sacred animal was the cow, and who was sometimes represented with a cow's horns, or a cow's head. In the Egyptian pantheon, which belonged to the Taurean Age, the goddess corresponding to Venus/Aphrodite was Hator, to whom likewise the cow was sacred and who was represented as a cow or with a cow's head. Hathor, like Aphrodite, was the goddess of love.
As in the case of the Moon, different forms or aspects of Aphrodite corresponded to different ways in which this component manifests in life and in different types of women. "Aphrodite Urania, or the celestial Aphrodite, was the goddess of pure and ideal love. Aphrodite Genetrix or Nymphia favoured and protected marriage...Aphrodite Pandemos (common) or Aphrodite Porne (courtesan) was the goddess of lust and venal love, the patroness of prostitutes". 56...The matters ruled over by these forms of this goddess, including beauty, adornment, joy, and the arts, exactly match those of Venus in astrology. In addition, the most important of Aphrodite's companions, Eros, was said to be he who "brings harmony to chaos", matching Venus' rulership of Libra, the sign of harmony.
We have already associated the planet Venus with magnetism, which is attraction, the principle that draws things together, which is love, whether venal or spiritual. Attraction and the sense of harmony, of working together within a larger unity, is also the basis of valuation, whether on the immediate level of sensation (Taurus) or on the aesthetic level, transcending the individual (Libra). Venus in Libra and the seventh house is the principle of relating to other persons, as follows from the feelings of love, harmony and the unity with something beyond oneself. The association of Venus with feeling we have already discussed (Ch. I), both in the sense of touch or physical sensation, and empathy, or "feeling with" or "feeling into", and its rôle, as the principle of valuation, in directing the application of psychic energy. We might say that as the principle of relating, it is Venus that matches what is encountered in the outside world (3rd quadrant) to the patterns already inherent in the unconscious psyche (1st and 2nd quadrants) and which are the carriers of affect.
The areas ruled by Venus belong, by general consent, to the feminine side of the Psyche, that is, to the soul and the feeling side of our nature. As far as men are concerned, women, other than mothers or crones, represent Venus, and psychologically they are more tuned in to that side of human nature. While each sex possesses both poles within it, obviously one or other is dominant according to gender, barring neurotic disturbances. In the case of woman, therefore, the Venus component is part of her dominant nature and overt personality, of her conscious self, and we have seen some of the forms and symbols this archetype can assume in connection with the Kore. In the psyche of a man, on the other hand, Venus as a personified figure will represent the contrasexual component, which will be an inner, more introverted and less conscious side of his nature. This feminine factor in the male psyche is called by Jung the anima, and it is one of the principle motive forces in the psychological drama, and one of the most personifiable of the archetypes. It is the soul, in a man, while the corresponding contrasexual factor in a woman he calls the animus. Both these factors properly belong to the collective unconscious, and are not individual. Their function is compensatory and to mediate between the conscious mind and the collective unconscious, or between consciousness and the self or the whole psyche. As archetypes of the collective unconscious they carry a very powerful charge of affect, and are numinous, and outside of and independent of consciousness. Jung has written probably more about this pair ('syzygy') of archetypes or psychic components than about any others except the "self", 57 and their projections or personifications are among the most dominant themes of dreams, fantasies, folklore and mythology. All forms of femmes fatales are anima projections; she can be the mermaid, fairy or maiden sitting on a rainbow, also the fairy godmother, the guide, Sophia, or the Holy Ghost. The animus can take corresponding masculine forms and be a Korus, any admired or authoritative male figure, or, in the case of a negative animus, a troublesome urchin, or a group of men or youths. Unlike the anima, the animus often appears as a plurality - "they", in the sense of a collectively conscious viewpoint. The animus and anima play, naturally, a leading role in any relationship between persons of opposite sex, especially in "falling in love", and this accounts for the extraordinarily numinous and overwhelming effect of this experience; and when they turn negative they manifest as the most banal and stereotyped expressions of the opposite gender - the anima as inferior feeling, childish moodiness and abusiveness, sentimentality and resentment, the animus as inferior thinking, "opinionated views, insinuations and misconstructions". The exact same confrontations and stereotyped arguments and expressions must be repeated between couples millions of times every day all around the world.
In astrology the Moon has often been associated with the anima; but allowing for the tendency of archetypes to merge and mingle to a certain extent, Jung recognises the distinct nature of the anima, and so does mythology, and Aphrodite is in no sense a lunar or mother goddess. In astrology the Moon and Venus are very clearly differentiated, as they are in the heavens. Again to understand fully the planetary archetypes they need to be considered in pairs or as constituents of various polarities. Here the obvious planet that makes a 'syzygy' with Venus is Mars. They constitute the two planets next to the Earth in the solar system, one inside, the other outside the Earth's orbit. They represent, as Rudhyar puts it, "the centrifugal and centripetal forces of experience". Or Ruperti: "Being the closest planets to the Earth, they refer symbolically to the most intimate factors in the human personality - the most immediate or spontaneous expressions of human nature". 58 Mars or Ares was the god of war: "Under many appearances, love and war are the constant life expressions of that polarised energy which propels the universe round." 59
Mars is most basically the translation of energy, directed by Venus, into muscular action, that is, of inner valuations into outwardly directed action, or bodily movement in the outside world. Mars, with Sun and Jupiter, belongs to the fiery element, and being the principle of action, is the ruler of Aries, the cardinal fire sign. Fire, as we have seen, is the creative principle, and in Aries Mars rules the germination of new life in the spring, the breaking out of bud and root, and, as archetype of the first house, of birth and the start of independent activity as an organism. The Sun rules Leo, the fixed fire sign, and the fifth house, the gathering of individual creative energy; and Jupiter rules Sagittarius and the ninth house, the mutable fire sign and third phase house, of reaching out to creation on the mental level, and to the ultimate creator. These three signs or houses form the "triangle of fire", the focussing of creative energy.
Mars is usually associated with the masculine principle, not unnaturally since outer activity, hunting or war, or even digging or ploughing, are more pronouncedly masculine occupations, and muscular development is more characteristic of the male body. Biologically the glyphs for Mars and Venus are those for male and female, and they stand for the active and passive rôles of the sexes, at least in terms of bodily movement in space, the male being assigned to seeking out the female, even in the case of plant pollen.
In astrology Mars is often associated with something called "Will". "Will" is a vague word with various connotations. It is not one of the psychological functions defined by Jung, and he seldom uses it. "The power or faculty of choosing or determining" is given in Chambers Dictionary, and this equates "will" with "free-will". Steiner is very fond of the concept will, and applies it to the "limb system", or power of movement, and muscular action, and this of course comes under Mars. "In Will is revealed the continually beginning, the continually germinating world" (Gladys Maier). Obviously in this view we are talking about Mars and Aries, the initial creative urge. Jung, in the section of definitions at the end of Psychological Types, says:
"I regard will as the amount of psychic energy at the disposal of consciousness. Volition would, accordingly, be an energic process that is released by conscious motivation. A psychic process, therefore, that is conditioned by unconscious motivation I would not include under the concept of the will. The will is a psychological phenomenon that owes its existence to culture and moral education, but is largely lacking in the primitive mentality."
This really does no more than equate will with applied psychic energy or libido, as long as it is consciously applied. We have suggested that psychic energy can be assigned to the Moon, as it is the same as emotional energy, which Jung calls affect, although it is reflected from the Sun, the original source of all energy. Mars translates this into muscular energy or movement, but the execution of all movements is, in its physiology, involuntary. The motivation is either value-orientated (Venusian, and also involuntary); or ego-orientated. If the energy is applied in a psychological way, that is through language, in order to dominate another person's thoughts and influence his actions, then it is psychic energy invested in the ego, which is Saturn. "Will" can also be applied to resistance rather than action, to obstinacy, conservatism, and to the refusal to budge, which can be associated with fear, or with strength of ego, and fear is involuntary, and ego comes under Saturn, which includes in its symbolsim the conscious ego. "Conscious motivation" seems to beg the question, since it might be impossible to find an example of motivation that is entirely conscious and uninfluenced by unconscious fears, complexes, compulsions, not to mention motivation inspired or illumined, to whatever extent, by the true self or the god within, which has to remain essentially unconscious. Motivation based on intuition would come from the unconscious, so that if there is such a thing as "conscious motivation" it would have to be purely rational and unassociated with psychic energy, which itself wells up from the lunar and instinctual unconscious, and does not have any relationship to the purely rational - thinking and feeling are after all mutually exclusive opposites which require a third factor, sensation or intuition, to unite them. The concept "will" therefore can be seen to be a hybrid idea which can be distributed in its implications among virtually all of the planetary archetypes, and it only serves to confuse any issue to which it is applied.
Mars is associated with desire or the fulfillment of desire, especially sexual desire; and so, on the feminine side, is Venus, which is the desired one for a man, while Mars plays this part for a woman. If something is desired, physically or mentally, Mars is the energy that goes after it; but with Mars this tends to be impulsive rather than sustained, the latter implying a quality we associate with Saturn. If the impulse is blocked or frustrated, Mars energy can turn to anger, which in a sense means turned against oneself or inverted. A large concentration of directed Mars energy spells passion, whether in the sense of desire or anger.
If Venus represents Eros, and the desired maiden for a man, or the ideal feminine, clearly she stands for the anima, or his own soul, or contrasexual counterpart. Mars, as the other term of the syzygy, then must play the same role for woman, and represent the animus. The only writer we know of having suggested this is Alice O. Howell in her book Jungian Symbolism in Astrology; it is entirely logical and, moreover, is born out by astrology in practice. In Greek myth Ares spends an adulterous night with Aphrodite. Venus and Mars are both directly concerned with emotional energy, and feeling, the function of the soul; and no other planets fit these archetypes; while without these archetypes, we have no other personifiable psychic components to fit these two planets. They are the planets of relating - precisely the area in which anima and animus most conspicuously function; while the Moon, as Jung says, is not a relating principle, and neither is Saturn, the only other candidate for animus. "All is fair in love or war". Ishtar, the Babylonian Aphrodite, is a war and love goddess; she "made brothers who are on good terms quarrel among themselves, and friends forget friendship" (Larousse) - a characteristic negative anima effect. Athene was another warlike anima goddess, who plays a leading part in the Odyssey. The confrontation in myth between Athene and Ares reflects the universal pattern of stereotyped dog-fight between anima and animus which characterises arguments between partners of opposite sex. It is not uncommon under neurotic conditions for a man or woman to be possessed by these unconscious archetypes, to the extent of showing a split personality, or Jekyl and Hyde effect. In such a case the anima or animus becomes very negative, generally to compensate a one-sided and self-destructive conscious attitude, and becomes contaminated with the shadow, the inferior and repressed contents of the personal unconscious. When Venus or Mars in the horoscope of a man or woman respectively are in the element corresponding to the inferior function, and/or have difficult aspects, especially to Saturn, one can infer with confidence that there is an anima or animus complex playing an important part in the person's psychology, and on the war-path in relationships.
Athene, besides being a warrior able to overcome Ares in battle, was also goddess of the arts of peace, of embellishment and prudent intelligence, showing her affinity with Venus. Likewise the Roman Mars functioned originally as an agricultural god, and the god of generative force, and god of spring, as does the astrological Mars. Mars and Aries as the principles of the first house in the horoscope stand for the opening upsurge of energy, for initiative, courage, joie-de-vivre, for the overcoming of obstacles and the asserting of individual enterprise as a newly emerged entity or independent organism. When outside dangers are encountered, this energy is turned to self-defense. Mars is related to the adrenal glands which govern external motion, fight and flight reactions. The opposite face of desire is fear, anger or repulsion, and the body is mobilised to react to a threat in an appropriate manner. With the psychological complications involved in human development such energies and reactions become easily misapplied, and turned into such things as quarrelsomeness, jealousy - with difficult aspects from Mars to the Sun or Moon - or sheer "egoism" - the law of the jungle, and of Darwin. For this reason Mars is often equated with ego which, as a psychological concept, belongs to Saturn. When Mars in the horoscope comes up against Saturn we have the principle of applied energy up against the principle of resistance and inertia. This pattern naturally is dangerous. It represents a psychological blockage which can manifest, as in any over-heated system, in outbreaks of over-concentrated energy on the psychological or material level, often as "accidents" and violence. Mars of course implies heat, the result of the application of energy, and redness. Mars in itself has no relation to consciousness or the conscious ego, but it has to do with self-assertion and self-protection on the purely instinctual and biological levels. It is the principle most obviously characteristic of the predatory animals and their weaponry.
REFERENCES - Chapter Five
1. Jung: Alchemical Studies p.222.
2. Jung: The Archetypes & the Collective Unconscious p.179.
3. Wolfgang Döbereiner: Seminare - Das Gleichnis des Elefanten, Band 1.
` (MÜnchen Rhythmenlehre. Verlag Döbereiner. 1990)
4. We are thinking here of Döbereiner's quite original interpretation of the four
quadrants of the horoscope and their significance in understanding the nature of reality.
5. Jung: Mysterium Conjunctionis par.304.
6. Jung: Alchemical Studies par.225.
7. Jung: Archetypes p.1168.
8. Ibid p.158.
9. Ibid p.159.
10. Ibid p.161 footnote.
11. Ibid p.168.
12. Ibid p.169.
13. Ibid p.170
14. Jung: Alchemical Studies p.227.
15. Ibid p.217.
16 Ibid p.233.
17. Jung: Myst. Conj. p.287.
18. Ibid p.97.
19. Ibid p.98.
20. Ibid p.110.
21. Ibid p.108.
22. Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth.
23. Jung: Symbols of Transformation p.177.
24. Ibid p.323.
25. Jung: Psychology & Alchemy p.84.
26. Ibid p.106.
27. Ibid p.343.
28. Jung Archetypes pp.276/277.
29. For a discussion of colloidal behaviour see the chapter under that heading in
Korzybski's Science and Sanity.
30. Liz Greene in The Luminaries (with Howard Sasportas).
31. W. Döbereiner: Textbook of Astrology Vol.I p.67 (pb. as above, English edition 1984, tr.Hal Wyner).
32. Jung: Myst. Conj. p.145 footnote.
33 Ibid p.144 from Pico della Mirandola. Venice 1557.
34. Ibid p.130 footnote.
35. Rodney Collin: Theory of Celestial Influence Ch.VIII The Moon.
36. Jung: Myst. Conj. p.136 footnote.
37. Rodney Collin p.40.
38. Ibid p.115. Most of the figures here are taken from this or an article in the Astrological Journal, Autumn 1983, by Nick Kollerstrom.
39. C.E.O. Carter: The Zodiac and the Soul.
40. This is exactly what is told us by "Seth": "The inner significances exist all at once to be tuned into at any point in time"; also referred to as "charged emotional patterns". Jane Roberts: The Nature of the Psyche p.147.
41. Jung: Symbols of Trans. p.89.
42. Ibid p.89 footnote.
43. Jung: Myst. Conj. p.461.
44. Jung Archetypes p.187.
45. Jung: Myst. Conj. p.175, par.216.
46. Ibid p.29.
47. Ibid p.29.
48. Ibid p.25.
49. Ibid p.39.
50. Ibid p.33.
51. Jung: The Practice of Psychotherapy pp.1158/9, pars.343/4.
52. Jung: Archetypes p.185.
53. Ibid p.188.
54. Ibid p.203.
55. Ibid p.82.
56. Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, p.130.
57. Especially in: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, pars. 289ff; Aion, chapter 3,
Practice, pp.220ff, Archetypes pp.25ff, the essay p.54, and many other references in this volume, while Emma Jung has devoted a volume of two essays to these figures.
58. Alexander Ruperti: Cycles of Becoming, p.82.
59. Joseph Campbell in his Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake.
60. Jung: Symbols of Tr. p.218.
CHAPTER SIX: THE PLANETARY ARCHETYPES II
Jupiter and Saturn
The three planets nearest to the Sun and to the Earth, as well as the Sun and Moon, the luminaries themselves, represent the basic functions of birth, growth and development of the individual up to adolescence. If we divide the circle of the horoscope into four quarters or quadrants by marking in the horizon, with the Ascendant and Descendant, from left to right, or East to West, and the vertical Meridian with Noon, or South (the Zenith) on top, and midnight, North, below, at the Nadir, the lower half represents the formative and inner process of development, from the moment of birth at the Ascendant, moving in an anti-clockwise direction. Each quadrant represents a seven-year period, or a quarter phase of the Saturn cycle, and of the lunation period if we take a day for a year (the cycle of the progressed Moon). These phases are the basic stages of growth, physical and psychological, from birth to psychological maturity at the completion of the first Saturn cycle between the age of twenty eight and thirty.
The first quadrant, from the Ascendant to the lower Meridian or Nadir, represents the phase of physical development and bodily growth, which is the focus of the first seven years in the developing child. This is development on the material level, or the manifestation in and incorporation into matter, and if we divide each quadrant into three houses, corresponding to the signs of the Zodiac, these first three houses mark the stages of this phase or quarter, which we can compare with the first quarter of the waxing Moon. The first house is ruled by the Mars principle, as the initial impulse of birth and bursting forth into the world, in which one must move and act as an independent being. Though the whole process of incarnation into matter concerns Saturn and the Sun-Saturn polarity, the physical acts of procreation and birth come under Mars. Birth itself is a violent, sharp and painful event, an expulsion into the outside world, where the new-born is immediately obliged to start taking independent action for its self-preservation, instead of being passively nurtured as before. In the second house we become aware of physical and bodily values, and our material needs for self-preservation, ruled by the principle of Venus in Taurus; and in the third house the principle of Mercury comes into play, in the interaction with the immediate environment through the organs of awareness and communication. Thus we see the three inner planets succeeding one another in reverse or involutionary order, as it were, from outside inwards in the solar system, or , seen another way, from physical being to awareness. This whole process of the first quadrant or the first seven years is presided over by Mars as ruler of the first house and of the limb system of movement, and it is not until this first stage is completed that the different parts of the body attain the required relative proportions, and the limb system has caught up in development with the size of the head. The first house in the natural zodiac derives from Aries, and this sign rules the head.
Each seven-year phase can in fact be divided into three stages, or modes of action, which apply in principle and are of the same quality in all four of them, or in each quadrant. These modes are called Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable: the first, the cardinal mode, is outgoing, centrifugal, the initial burgeoning of energy and activity; the second, or fixed mode, is inwardly directed, a gathering of energy or substance, in a centripetal manner, like a dynamo; while the third is known as mutable, and represents the interaction with the environment and adaptation to its conditions. In a way these stages could be regarded as thesis, antithesis and synthesis, or the beginning, middle and end of each seven-year period. The three houses and three signs of the Zodiac of each quadrant fall into these modes or categories, the first of each being cardinal, the second fixed and the third mutable. Starting the cycle at the Ascendant at 0¡ Aries, where the Sun rises at the spring equinox, the signs fall into the houses and categories of the Natural Zodiac, and are always classified accordingly as Cardinal, Fixed or Mutable, making four of each kind, one for each of the four elements (fire, air, water and earth). In terms of the seven-year period, each house represents two and a third years.
Only when we get to the second quadrant do we find the Moon, ruling in principle the fourth house or Cancer, and then the Sun ruling the fifth, or Leo. (In the deeper sense of the "exaltation" of the planets, the Sun is said to be exalted in Aries, the sign of the spring equinox, and the Moon in Taurus, so that Mercury would then follow in Gemini in the normal order.) This phase consequently, and the second seven years of life, is the period of emotional development and the acquisition of values on the spiritual level; but it is not yet the time for specifically intellectual development. One could say it is the development of an awareness of our psychic and creative potential, and the time for education of the feeling and rhythmic system, and of the imagination. The only educational system to observe properly these natural phases of development and the principles involved is the one founded by Rudolf Steiner.
At the sixth house, taking its character from Virgo, we have the Mercury principle again, in the house of adaptation of our individual potential to the conditions we find around us; that is, to application in practice, in the material world, in accordance with the earth sign Virgo. "The essence of conscious processes is adaptation, which takes place in a series of particulars". 1 It is here that we develop a rational approach to our problems and a way of dealing with the world as an individual, ultimately in terms of working and making a living. It may be a kind of synthesis of our potential, but it is more likely to be a compromise with reality; if we fail to adapt, it is here we find sickness. Rudhyar characterises this house as the house of crisis, and the first time around, or in the first cycle of the houses, we meet it coming up to adolescence; the second time before the mid-life crisis at about forty two. Adolescence is half-way through the first Saturn cycle - that is, the opposition of Saturn to its natal position, while mid-life is half-way in the Uranus cycle, when this planet opposes its natal place, and half-way in the second Saturn cycle.
After progressing through the houses from one to six, we have completed the first hemisphere or lower half of the chart, representing our inner development up to the age of fourteen. If we look for a comparison at the phases of the Moon, we have gone through the period of the waxing Moon, from New Moon to Full Moon, or the first half of the cycle, which takes fourteen days. After this, at puberty, we come into the world above the horizon, or the outer world, where we have to separate from our parents and childhood and, as sexually mature individuals, encounter the other - the other person and the other sex, the world of ideas, and the question of functioning in the social sphere. "Psychic birth, and with it the conscious differentiation from the parents, normally takes place only at puberty, with the eruption of sexuality". 2 We find the third house, or third stage, of both the first and second quadrants ruled by Mercury, and this third or "mutable" stage is the one of adjusting to the environment, through communication (mental and nervous) and consciousness. The seventh house - the first of the third quadrant - is ruled by Venus, goddess of love (as the principle of Libra), since this is the house of close relationships and confronting others, or seeing oneself reflected in others (Full Moon stage) and finding a balance. The next house is ruled by Mars, in its water sign of Scorpio, involving sex and the other passions, and commitment to ideals, the motivating factor supposedly behind war; if this is not in fact a commitment to appropriating other people's property, another traditional eighth house association. Thus the three inner planets succeed one another this time in evolutionary order, from Mercury to Mars, from inner to outer. Only after this, in the ninth house, do we come to Jupiter, the first of the outer planets, and relating to the social realm; while the fourth quadrant is the realm of Saturn, ruler of the tenth house, and the trans-Saturnian planets, where we see the final result, what is accomplished through the previous three quadrants (Döbereiner). However Pluto, as the higher octave of Mars, is already the deeper principle of Scorpio and the eighth house.
The seventh house, and so essentially the third quadrant, takes its character from Libra, which is an air sign, belonging to the thinking function. It is at the age of fourteen therefore that methodical intellectual development and education should begin, to conform to the natural physical and psychological unfolding of the individual, and not to impair and distort, by premature intellectual cramming, the development on the physical and feeling levels of the earlier two phases. "Too early intellectualism stultifies the rhythmic system and creativity." It leads to abstract thought, to seeing everything as physical cause and effect, and "dead thinking". 17 The age of twenty one - the third quarter of the Saturn cycle - is the conventional and legal "coming of age", when the person is physically adult, and may start to take a place in society (the fourth quadrant starts with Saturn); or may be involved in the last phase of schooling at university level, or in some form of technical apprenticeship. This may actually begin at the stage of the ninth house (age 18-19), the house of "higher education". It is not however until the first Saturn cycle is completed, or at age 28-30, that psychological maturity is reached. This is not generally recognised, though it is common for a decisive change to occur at that age, and for the person either to see clearly for the first time his or her true vocation, or to capitulate to collective values and pressures and give up individuality. "The social goal is attained only at cost of diminution of personality". 3 This is always the choice to be made at the first Saturn return, which is the first major cross-roads in life. In terms of progressing through the quadrants we have come round again to the Ascendant, and hence a potential second birth into conscious adulthood.
The second Saturn cycle covers one's active life as a member of the social community, raising a family, and generally life in the world, up to the second Saturn return at the age of about sixty. This is the threshold of another major phase in life, and of radical change. The direction it takes depends upon to what extent the person has remained an individual capable of growth and development, as opposed to having given up this possibility at the first Saturn return and simply become a stereotyped unit of the collective. In the latter case the second Saturn return signals the onset of old age, retirement and progressive senility. If however the person is psychologically still alive, in the sense of having retained the potential for development, then this is the stage of withdrawal from the world and family responsibilities in order to devote oneself to true inner development on the spiritual level - the age in ancient India of becoming a "forest philosopher". "The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning." 4 Here we have the possibility of a third birth.
The cycle round the houses can also be regarded on a different scale as the whole of individual life, and representing the stages of development through which we have to pass from birth to death. In this case each house, rather than each quadrant, represents seven years, and the whole circle of full development covers eighty four years, the ideal lifetime for the complete development of present day man, and the orbital period of Uranus. This means full development up to the next spiritual level, or the next Yuga, or planetary round. In practice however present man does not usually develop beyond Saturn, and the proper span of seventy years. Being under Saturn means bounded by the material world and subject to Fate; seventy years, in seven-year periods through the signs and houses, brings us to the end of the tenth house, ruled by Saturn and the sign Capricorn, and up to the threshold of the eleventh house and Aquarius, ruled by Uranus. This is where we begin to transcend material reality.
The ninth house is the mental term of the triad of houses comprising the third quadrant; but instead of Mercury it is ruled by Jupiter, the principle of Sagittarius. This is properly higher thinking, at least thinking in a wider context. If the third quadrant represents what is mentally encountered in the outside world, then the ninth house is the stage of understanding what is encountered, which means relating it to everything else. Jupiter forms a polarity with Mercury, ruling opposite signs and houses, and this is no longer just naming and classifying objects of concrete experience and forming concepts; but it is thinking in terms of ultimate meaning, against the background of the whole idea world. Sagittarius ( ), being the mutable fire sign, with its arrow pointing to the beyond, this must be intuitive thinking, and pointing to meaning involves thinking in symbols. Jupiter and the ninth house include religion among their meanings or within their sphere of reference. "If", writes Jung, "...I analyse abstruse religious symbols and trace these back to their origins, my sole purpose is to conserve, through understanding, the values they represent, and to enable people to think symbolically once more, as the early thinkers of the church were still able to do."5
In ancient Greece Zeus was the reigning god on Mount Olympus, the god of celestial phenomena and the upper air, the All-High. "He became the supreme god who united in himself all the attributes of divinity" (Larousse). He was the father of Apollo and Artemis, and Apollo, the solar principle, was only his prophet. If Zeus was originally a solar deity, "in Greece Sun-worship never displaced thunder-god worship" (Graves). Moreover, "the Sun's subordination to the Moon (the great goddess), until Apollo usurped Helius' place and made an intellectual deity out of him, is a remarkable feature of early Greek myth". 6 For the Romans, "the Latin Jupiter was first of all the god of light - sun and moon - and of celestial phenomena - the great tutelary power of the empire" (Larousse). For the Teutons his parallel was Thor, considered by some of them as the first and most powerful of the gods. Thunder and the violence of the elements are among the most immediately impressive of common natural phenomena.
Astronomically the planet Jupiter is in certain ways comparable to the Sun, and has even been thought to pair with the Sun to make a double star. It stands midway between the Sun and the earth in size, and is thought to be on the way toward becoming a sun in its own right - which would involve an enormous expansion. It has twelve known moons, and so a complex system of satellites:
"The system of Jupiter, in number of satellites, their size, distance, speeds of revolution and so on, seems to present to us an exact model of the Solar System. At any rate the approximation is so close that it is impossible not to believe that the two are constructed or have grown according to the same laws. The orbits and periods of Jupiter's moons, for instance, are found to have a constant relation to the orbits and periods of the planets of the Solar System, though naturally with different factors for orbital distance and for orbital time....It confirms that Jupiter, like the sun, is a complete living entity or cosmos." 7
Jupiter evidently provided the Greco-Roman culture with a divinity more tangible, more accessible and more easily humanized than the Sun; one that is comparable, but less transcendental, and more easily understood in concrete terms, closer to the earth. Jupiter was an intermediary or representative sun, bringing the Sun's attributes to men; or in other words Jupiter plays the part of the solar hero, and represents the archetype of the hero.
The myth of the hero follows a typical pattern of battling with monsters, dragons, magicians and giants, just as both Thor and Zeus were habitually doing. It usually involves the descent to the underworld, and its purpose is to show that "only in the region of danger (watery abyss, cavern, forest, island, castle etc.) can one find the 'treasure hard to attain'". 8 A regular feature is the night sea journey, which symbolises the descent into the waters of the unconscious. This is compared with the setting of the Sun, but the mythical hero is only a parallel, a secondary likeness or solar agent, not the Sun itself. He is half human, and fills "the universal need for a visible hero". 9
"The religious figure cannot be a mere man for it has to represent what it actually is, namely the totality of all those primordial images which express the 'extraordinarily potent', always and everywhere. What we seek in visible human form is not man, but the superman, the hero or god, that quasi-human being who symbolises the ideas, forms and forces which grip and mould the soul. These, so far as psychological experience is concerned, are the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious....In this way (men) make contact with the source and regain something of that mysterious and irresistible power which comes from the feeling of being part of the whole."
Again:
"The god is by nature wholly supernatural; the hero's nature is human but raised to the limit of the supernatural - he is 'semi-divine'" - a "synthesis of the...unconscious and human consciousness. Consequently he signifies the potential of an individuation process that is approaching wholeness." 10
Jung's equation of light with consciousness is not satisfactory. Individuation is the synthesis of spirit with consciousness; that is, light plus consciousness, or illumined consciousness. Consciousness qua se is mental, and represented in the first place by Mercury (left brain thinking), consciousness of the outer world. Jupiter brings spirit to consciousness, as fire or intuition, and this is the role of the hero. "So long as consciousness refrains from acting, the opposites will remain dormant in the unconscious". 11..They "must be activated by the intervention of the conscious mind, otherwise they will remain merely dormant". The hero is the symbol of the one who acts. The deeds of the hero include often the battle with the sea monster, or being swallowed by a sea monster (Jonah) - "to free the ego-consciousness from the deadly grip of the unconscious." "Again and again the hero must renew the struggle, and always under the symbol of delivrance from the mother. Just as Hera, in her rôle of the pursuing mother, is the real source of the mighty deeds performed by Hercules." 12 Liz Greene on this theme says: "In some myths, the Threshold Crossing is not a dragon to fight, but involves the actual death of the hero, prior to transformation or resurrection." (The funeral march of the Eroica Symphony). "There is always a problem of suffering - loneliness, isolation, guilt and the enmity of others - when the Sun begins to emerge."
The Mercury-Jupiter polarity embodies the whole myth of the hero, firstly the archetype of the miraculous child, who then grows into the hero. Jupiter was a god of light, and brings light into consciousness, or represents an expansion of consciousness to include the inner world; but is not light itself. It is true however that darkness (which is not the same as absence of light, as we shall see later) does symbolise the unconscious, in its negative aspect as a chaos of instincts mingled with the ghosts of world history and of all the primitive and repressed stages of the experience of the species, conjured up in Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake". This is something like the 'personal unconscious' of the collective, without the therapeutic value of Jung's clinical collective unconscious with its primary functional archetypes. "The hero's main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness...it is the long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious". 13
One would have to distinguish between this negative and "dark" aspect of the unconscious, which must represent not only the personal but the collective shadow, and be equivalent to evil, with its contents of devils, monsters, witches and demons (Pandora's box) - from the unconscious which compensates the conscious mind, is the seat of the soul and leads, if one can find the way to it, to individuation and the self - to enlightenment. This is where the individual's Sun is to be found, and so evidently this part of the unconscious represents light, and we might need for it Assagiogli's term, the superconscious. The conscious mind, on the other hand, is not by any means all light, and Mercurius, as we have seen, can be the Trickster, and even an evil spirit, found shut up in a bottle. Consciousness is the knowledge of good and evil, a different thing from light. It is light interacting with darkness.
The prototype of the hero was perhaps Prometheus, although Prometheus was a Titan(the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene) and of the same breed as the gods. He was a hero however in as much as he took humanity's side, against divine wrath, and was "the benefactor of mankind and the father of all the arts and sciences". These had been taught him by Athene, but he was naturally far-sighted and prudent, being also the prototype of the introvert. His most conspicuous act was the stealing of fire for the benefit of mankind, which associates him forever with intuition and Sagittarius; and he was also a prophet, and benefited Zeus with some important advice. He was finally admitted to Olympus through the good offices of the Centaur Chiron, who was willing to exchange destinies with him and take his place in Hades; this connects him even more convincingly with Sagittarius, the sign of the Centaur. The punishment of Prometheus for his theft of fire, of being chained to the crests of Mount Caucasus for an eagle to devour his liver, is a most remarkable demonstration of the fact that in astrology both Jupiter and Sagittarius are associated with the liver, as an empirical and inescapable matter of experience in practice. (This kind of thing shows up in a very poor light the tendency among some authors, including notably Robert Graves, to try to explain mythology as merely a fanciful way of representing historical events.) The liver as the organ of assimilation on the physical level corresponds to the function of Jupiter on the mental level, as the assimilation of conscious information into a total philosophy, in which it acquires meaning.
If Prometheus brought fire, Epimetheus on the other hand was fooled by Zeus into receiving and welcoming Pandora and letting loose over humanity the contents of her box, or jar.
If Zeus was worshipped by the Greeks as a sub-sun, and Prometheus was in a sense another aspect of Zeus with a special affinity with humanity, their main mythological heroes such as Theseus, Perseus or Herakles, were sons or descendants of Zeus or Poseidon, by human mothers, and thus a kind of partly human sub-Zeus. Not all the Greek heroes had been related to the gods - such as Odysseus - but they "became eventually demi-gods and in the hierarchy occupied a position midway between men and the Olympians" (Larousse). Thus they belonged strictly to mythology and served as different facets or contexts of the archetype of the hero, and as symbols. This archetype however is continually embodied in historical and particularised form in actual persons, who bring fire, and particular messages at particular times, for humanity as a whole.
"Avatars, heroes, creative geniuses, cannot be regarded as saints, even less as mystics; nor are they occultists or Masters, in the usual sense of these much abused terms...They are not 'fallen Angels' or gods in disguise. They are links between the divine and the human. They are channels of communication and transmission...They are utterances of destiny through human bodies and individual minds."
"Reverence is the very soul of true heroism; reverence before the supreme and always mysterious Source of the power and the intensity that makes the actor vibrate often seemingly far beyond any conceivable natural strength. The true hero, either at the moment of doing or in a deep unexplainable but constant manner, is aware of a mystery within." (Rudhyar)
Like the planet Jupiter, heroes function on a social and collective level rather than an individual one like Mars and Venus, or animus and anima.
The three fire houses, taking their character from the Natural Zodiac, the "triangle of fire", mark the stages of creativity: in the first is the initial vital impulse of life to expand and create, first bodily and then in a manner or a medium suggested by the sign(s) and planet(s) in it; in the fifth house this creativity takes form or becomes realised through the gathering of inner emotional and individual energy, applied to what is encountered in the outside world (3rd quadrant) 15 ; in the ninth, the product of creativity acquires meaning, and is related to the whole, or is dedicated to God. Here it becomes symbol. The rôle of "self-realisation" in this process, as opposed to "self denying", that is, realising or maintaining one's own true potential and inner integrity and individuality (real 'self'), while at the same time being dedicated to not-self (where to perceive the threshold?) is shown at the middle term of this triad, the fifth house, defined by the Sun and Leo. The self-assertive organic energy in Aries has to be seen in terms of the true solar self in Leo, before it can be effectively dedicated to the whole (the greater Sun) - "others" in that sense - in Sagittarius. This is the path of the hero. We see in this process the operation of Logos and Eros. These principles are often confused with the masculine and feminine polarities; the idea of the solar Logos makes the Sun sound masculine and produces a "father" god. They are properly understood in Plotinus: Logos, the outpouring from the higher principle, and Eros, loving, the reaching upwards from the lower principle, or the need to return to unity.
In this context we can see the relationship between Jupiter and Venus, which form a pair here. In traditional astrology these two planets were paired as the two "benefics" and their "influence" was thought benign. As symbols of value and meaning this was well founded. Venus as the planet of love and the principle of harmony has a lot to do with Eros, and this finds its highest expression in religion or the love of God, the aspiration or "binding back" to divinity ( ), or the attainment of higher meaning. Halfway between self-expression (fifth house and Leo) and self-dedication or union with God (ninth house and Sagittarius), we have the Venus sign of Libra, harmony and aesthetic values; or on a more particular and personal level, union with another. Jupiter can be said to represent higher values, or the principle of meaning toward which aesthetic values point. Or Jupiter supplies the wider context and the element of intuition. In the horoscope, "Jupiter conflicts are conflicts of value. The goals of one's self-unfoldment find themselves in conflict with the standards prevailing in the social environment", and this "involves one's personal sense of the meaning of life." 16 This is often represented in the horoscope by hard aspects between Jupiter and Saturn. Saturn represents the collective conscious and the status quo. When Jupiter is in conjunction with Saturn, and in an earth sign, which has always been the case in our time, Saturn is the stronger and overshadows Jupiter. This means that materiality predominates, the sense of meaning cannot get beyond the material world. Those born under this conjunction tend to reject religion with determination, and while their aesthetic and moral values may be highly developed, their thinking is confined within Saturnian limits, their philosophy materialist, and death for them is final (nothing beyond Saturn).
After the inner or personal planets, radiating out from the Sun, up to Mars, there is a very wide gap before Jupiter is reached, occupied only by the asteroids. This gap is more than three times the distance of Mars from the Sun, and it is nearly as far again before we reach Saturn. From our point of view this makes seven planetary archons, a complete octave, comprising the solar system and visible to the naked eye. These all correspond to functions of our life on earth, within the categories of space and time as we know them, and this octave defines the wave-lengths within which we function, comparable to the spectrum of visible light. While the inner planets determine, or are functions of our inner conditioning, the two outermost of the system are the determinants of our outer conditioning. In the first and most immediate sense this refers to the larger social entity to which we have to adjust at puberty. In every way our relations to this are symbolised by Jupiter and Saturn, and contained within the basic meanings of those archetypes, and the basic polarity they form between them. Jupiter, by far the largest of the planets, possibly expanding, and in a sense the "tutelary deity of the empire", representing space, and the principle of expansion. Saturn, the second largest, and the outer limit of the solar system proper, the determining hand of our clock, representing time, or Fate, and the principle of contraction. Expansion and contraction, or pulsation, is the distinguishing feature of the life process. On the larger scale, up to mid-life the Jupiter principle of expansion prevails, then contraction of the autonomic nervous system sets in, and the Saturn principle of withdrawing inwardly and eventual death. Hence Saturn is the Reaper.
Saturn was Cronus (Chronos), offspring of the sky (Ouranos) and the Earth, and he fathered the first Olympian gods. Thus he was in a sense the father of the planets of the solar system, and divided the sky from the earth realm. He formed the time-barrier, which limits all earthly phenomena, and is the limit which marks out the material world with its three dimensions of space. This space world is then ruled by Jupiter-Zeus. The Greeks had Cronus swallow a stone instead of his last son, Zeus, and stone or rock is one of the associations of this archetype, possibly because rock is associated with age, endurance and time. Since Zeus escaped being swallowed by him - time eventually swallows everything but space - this space-god superceded his father as the reigning deity, since time was antipathetic to Greek culture, which focused on the foreground and the immediate present, surfaces and the visible world. Cronus was banished to some vague region under the earth.
With Christianity and the Gothic or Faustian culture time was reinstated and, as the boundary of the solar system and the determinant of the material world, Saturn is our most interesting archetype, both in his physical and metaphysical aspects. Beyond him is the sky, and Ouranos, which has since 1781 been identified as an outer planet, but retains in astrology, and as a symbol, its trans-Saturnian and metaphysical implications. This is not just a specious bit of fancy, but a matter of empirical observation, as every astrologer knows. Though Jupiter rules within the world of 3-dimensional space, limited by time, it is the archetype of expansion, including ultimately expansion of consciousness, through symbol and intuition, and its glyph of the arrow points beyond Saturn. It operates however within the Saturnian limits, as it did for the Greeks, and points to the beyond, like the hero, without itself attaining to the next stage, or the next Age. Jupiter after all is co-ruler of Pisces, and co-ruler of the Piscean Age, the age of expansion in space.
Saturn is the barrier between the worlds, and between the Ages, and so the key to the mystery of life on earth and consciousness. Joseph Campbell wrote in his early book A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: "The fall is the secret of all history". Saturn is the archetype that sums up, embodies and symbolises all aspects of this Fall and contains its meaning. It is the Fall into Matter, into the world of polarity and the opposites, hence into the knowledge of good and evil. This entails Sin, since matter is darkness, and therefore equivalent to evil. Matter is seen by Plotinus as the source of all evil; and if one is to be incorporated into Matter and experience this darkness one must partake of it and be sinful. The Fall was arranged by Satan (another form of the word Saturn), in the guise of a serpent, which is a symbol of cleverness, perhaps ultimately of wisdom, and also a symbol of bodily instincts and sensuality - a phallic symbol, pointing to captivation in the material world of the senses. Saturn in astrology is the Guardian of the Threshold of the material world, ruler of the earth sign Capricorn, and of the properties of matter, weight, density, and "gravity", attraction towards the centre. It is the only wholly 'earth' planet, and symbolises solidification, rigidity, crystallisation and freezing, and it also represents cold - in fact the opposite of fire, and of light, not radiating but contracting and congealing. The metal lead, bones, graves, skeletons, dark things and fear come under its aegis, barrenness and rock. In alchemy it is the dark pole of Mercurius: "The 'black sulphur' is a pejorative name for the active, masculine substance of Mercurius and points to its dark, saturnine nature, which is evil. This is the ...'Ethiopian', and...analogous to the 'Egyptian'...who from the Christian point of view is the devil. He is the activated darkness of matter, the umbra Solis (shadow of the sun), which represents the virginal-maternal prima materia." 19
On the other hand all these attributes have a positive aspect, and in this earth realm constitute the necessary condition of polarity, without which we cannot learn or become conscious. The intellectual and verbal processes of Mercury have to come up against matter and empirical reality, to learn "black and white", light and shade, in order to develop true discrimination. Hence Saturn is discipline, the Great Teacher, not only Satan but Lucifer, the elder son of God, the Light Bringer, and encompasses the mystery of Good and Evil. In this we can understand the duality of the Piscean Age and how it is divided between the two sons of God, the solar Hero and Lucifer. When matter becomes the sole determinant and we cannot see beyond this limit, when the arrow of Sagittarius no longer functions, or is turned in on itself - for Sagittarius is also a dual sign, like the Centaur, half human, half horse or animal - then Lucifer becomes Satan, the wholly dark side of this archetype. We are in the cave of Capricorn, or of Plato's allegory in The Republic. Cronus then appears to have swallowed the lot, and become Fate.
In Michelangelo's painting on the Sistine Chapel ceiling Adam is lying on a bare rock, within the realm of Saturn; but with one raised arm he touches fingers with God. This gesture has a nonchalant, rather than enthusiastic appearance, and embodies the spirit of the Renaissance, which develops into the second half of the Piscean Age, when this finger-contact with God is lost or abandoned. It is interesting to compare the Sistine Adam with another picture which we have already mentioned "There is No Night" by Jack Yeats, in which a reclining figure in a very similar posture and situation, but in a surrounding darkness, is making a gesture with the same left arm raised, not to an allegorical and anthropomorphic Father-Figure in a cloud, but to a white horse, a symbol of another and spiritual world. This time however, on the threshold of another Age, emerging from darkness, the gesture is one of enthusiastic welcoming.
If matter and the material world is the realm of darkness, or the cave, and we are reaching up to the light, to touch fingers with God, this is the Sun-Saturn polarity, of light and darkness. This is the basic polarity which defines all others, or it is the principle of polarity itself, and equates with good and evil. To understand it is to understand the Fall, the nature of "sin", and suffering, and incarnation, of life on earth, and consciousness; and the full significance of squaring the circle and the number Four. All the qualities symbolised by Saturn are the determinants of consciousness, which is the knowledge of good and evil; Saturn therefore has a lot to do with consciousness, and this depends on darkness as much as upon light. Saturn stands for boundaries and outlines, without which we cannot discriminate the forms of objects in the visible world (in space); while outlines are defined by shadow, that is, darkness. Saturn naturally then, as the principle of outlines and limitations, is form. This is demonstrated most effectively by Turner in some of his late water-colours. As he grew older he became increasingly occupied with light, and in these pictures the scene is so flooded with light that only vague suggestions of forms and outlines remain. For the maximum definition, light and dark must be equally strong, and in sharp contrast and juxtaposition.
All these considerations strongly suggest that darkness is a quality in its own right and not merely the absence of light. Jung quotes from the alchemist Michael Maier: "The sun and its shadow bring the work to perfection", and comments on "the self evident fact that without light there is no shadow, so that, in a sense, the shadow too is emitted by the sun." Occasionally the alchemical Sol "appears as black itself. It contains both light and darkness. 'For what in the end', asks Maier, 'is this sun without a shadow? The same as a bell without a clapper'"...."To the alchemical way of thinking the shadow is no mere privatio lucis (absence of light); just as the bell and its clapper are of a tangible substantiality, so too are light and shadow." 20 Exactly the same applies to the polarity of good and evil, and the very concept of polarity requires two poles, not merely one and its absence. One cannot define the South Pole as just the absence of Northness, as a modern "philosopher" might do; and anyone who thinks that cold is just the absence of heat should take a trip to the South Pole. Jung wrote in Aion: "The hybris of the speculative intellect had already emboldened the ancients to propound a philosophical definition of God that more or less obliged him to be the Summum Bonum...It is the effective source of the privatio boni (absence of good), which nullifies the reality of evil...fully developed in Augustine." 21 Without evil, however, as without darkness, we could not have differentiation, which means creation, and multiplicity, the "ten-thousand-things"; and evolution, and graduation from Saturn's school and the rules applying to his realm, with the return towards unity. It appears that we need the experience of crystallisation to learn or master the world of forms, and we need evil to master good. We are activated at the intersection of both poles, the interaction of which produces a dynamism. Too much contraction or identification with matter produces "evil"; too much detachment or non-participation in material reality produces unconsciousness or lack of definition, which means lack of development, which also is "evil" in the sense of undesirable, and in the sense of missing the boat. Thus too much light makes forms indistinguishable, as well as too much darkness, and serves only as an occasional corrective. Both good and evil are conditional and only apply to the Earth realm and within the limited perspective of our understanding. Like time and space, they are categories of perception; or in another sense of self-projection. In Plotinus' terms they are Essence and Process - "the soul's seeing" is darkened by "its decline into Matter, by its very attention no longer to Essence but to Process - whose principle or source is, again, Matter.." - the material and mechanical view of the world. In practical terms of life on Earth they are systole and diastole, expansion and contraction, within the Jupiter-Saturn polarity, the rhythm of life, or disturbances of that rhythm.
The interaction of the poles of Sun and Saturn is best appreciated when they are seen as light and darkness, for while the juxtaposition and contrast of these produces definition, their intermingling produces colours. This fact also demonstrates the independent reality of darkness, which was shown by Goethe through meticulous and thorough scientific experiments with a prism. The theory of Newton is comparable to the privatio boni definition of evil, and to defining Saturn as the absence of Sun. Goethe showed, and anyone can confirm, that light displaced over a background of darkness produces one series of colours, while darkness displaced over light produces another, and that one or the other series is always to be seen through a prism precisely and only at the intersection between light and dark. That all colours arise from various mixtures of darkness and light, and that they have a significance and inner meaning for life on the psychic and emotional level which goes far beyond anything suspected in the conventional approach, 22 is a result of Goethe's theory of colours, a part of his life's work on which he placed the highest value. This kind of inner understanding of colours and their relation to one another makes the works of certain painters immediately stand out as alive and meaningful in this dimension, though this is not common. The later works of Turner show some outstanding examples, and while Turner was in fact familiar with Goethe's Colour Theory, this kind of colour sense must be natural and inborn where it exists. In the colours of Vermeer and the later works of Monet we feel an awareness of what is behind the sense world, something else, another dimension, shines through; while in the painters of the Italian Renaissance the surface tends to predominate, and we do not find the same significant feeling for colour. It is a more rational world.
While forms are differentiated by light and shade for conscious discrimination, colours address the Venus functions of sensation and feeling and the sense of values. Jung wrote: "We have only to look at the drawings and paintings of patients who supplement their analysis by active imagination to see that colours are feeling values". 23 They represent a differentiation of feeling. Feeling differentiated in this way goes beyond the sphere of magnetism, of attraction and repulsion or Venus and Mars, and carries us outside the Saturnian limits. Astrologically Neptune is the symbol of higher feeling values, which carry us beyond the material world. It is the symbol of transubstantiation, one of the stages of initiation, and is associated with mystical and devotional religion - it is the ruler of Pisces.
The manifestation of colour through the interaction of light and darkness tells us much about the meaning of polarity, and of good and evil, in the evolution of the soul, and the discrimination of values. It tells us also about the meaning of colour, or the lack of it, in the world around us. Immersed in Matter, we are at the bottom of the Fall, at the lowest point in the curve, represented by the number Four. 24 "This is the fall of the Soul, this entry into Matter", and: "the Soul would never have approached Matter but that the presence of Matter is the occasion of its earth-life". 25 It seems that evil is necessary for differentiation, and Mephistopheles speaks of "the power that produces good while ever scheming evil". We have to develop consciousness precisely through Matter, our ABC has to be spelled out for us in stone, or in the Bead Game of the solar system. In the earth signs we become conscious of the objective and material world: through immediate sensory perception in Taurus, which is feminine, subjective and evaluating, and represents Eros; through mental discrimination and analysis, and the development of practical skills in Virgo, ruled by Mercury, which is androgynous, neutral or impartial, and sometimes takes the form of Mephistopheles; and in Capricorn, the cardinal earth sign, we become conscious of the world of Forms as they are embodied in Matter, and as the manifestation of the Logos. Its ruler, Saturn, is a masculine principle.
Saturn rules or is the principle of the anterior pituitary gland, which determines masculine traits, the skeletal system, and reason. As the principle of form and structure it applies to bone structure as much as to structured thinking, in logic and reasoning. Social structures, laws and conventions also come under it, and as the principle of solidification it upholds established customs, viewpoints and systems, dogma and the status quo and everything that has become rigid or frozen and resists change. As the principle of Matter it regards with gravity all structures and institutions concerned with maintaining material interests and social stability, it is cautious and conservative and takes its responsibilities seriously. Levity is its opposite, and humour is always subversive to the accepted and taken-for-granted, being an attribute of Uranus. It is natural also that Saturn should be concerned with Death, with the return of the body to matter, with graves, skeletons and yew trees, and hence with Fate or Destiny, the tolling of the bell, the sign that our Time is up. But as Death says in "Death and the Maiden": "I am a friend and do not come to punish".
Many of the foregoing characteristics, especially those concerned with the maintenance of social and economic security, and accepted standards of logical thinking (the collective conscious), are recognised as predominantly masculine preoccupations, and as the domain of the father in the context of the family. The mother and the feminine are naturally associated with a personal rather than social orientation, and with nurturing, the home, and the more instinctive and unconscious sides of life. This is the Moon-Saturn polarity in astrology, ruling the signs of Cancer and Capricorn, the signs of the summer and winter solstices, and of the Nadir and Midheaven of the horoscope, representing home, the inner world and the emotions at the Nadir, as opposed to function and status in the outer, social world at the Midheaven. Mother and Father are psychological functions and realities, independently of the actual parents, who may or may not adequately embody them in practice. They are the two poles of psychological development of the child, just as their spheres of influence are represented by the two poles of the horoscope. The planets ruling whichever signs occur at the poles of the individual horoscope often represent the actual parents, while Moon and Saturn, ruling the poles of the Natural Zodiac, represent the parental functions as such, in combination with and as part of the whole range of meanings included in these archetypes. Saturn is the archetype of fatherhood, not in the biological sense of Mars, but in the sense of paternal law, and as delegate of the social polity, in which he is also the family's representative. The Old Testament Saturn is Jahweh, the relentless law-giver, and scourge of Job, the origin of God as a father-figure. This is the external law, as laid down by the collective consciousness, and also the law of Fate, or Karma, laid down by Time, and not the "moral law within" to which Kant refers, echoed by Beethoven, for this is the spirit, or the solar principle. The polarity of Sun-Saturn is that of inner self (conscience) versus establishment (consciousness), and the prerogatives of these may be and often are in direct opposition.
The objective or outer father is Saturn, who represents consciousness. Jung refers to "a human father (i.e. consciousness)". Consciousness here means consciousness as we know it, conditioned by Matter, and Space, and limited by Saturn, that is, where time is represented as movement in space, and a succession of foci of consciousness. When we associate Saturn with consciousness we mean the conditioning and structuring of consciousness by time, both in the broad sense as a Kantian category of consciousness (the solar system within the orbit of Saturn), and in the narrow sense of an individual time-cycle. We are primarily conscious as individuals, and we look out on the world from the subjective point of view of our own egos. The ego is defined as the centre of consciousness, or "the structure of the field of consciousness" (Rudhyar), and this includes the limits of that field in individual experience. While Saturn symbolises limits, and therefore separateness and individuality, the individual life, as a cycle within cycles, is as we have seen measured out in its stages by the actual cycles of Saturn. The ego follows these stages, since they are the primary psychological and bodily rôles in which it sees itself. "By ego", writes Jung, "I understand a complex of ideas which constitutes the centre of my field of consciousness and appears to possess a high degree of continuity and identity...the ego is only the subject of my consciousness, while the self is the subject of my total psyche, which includes the unconscious". 28 In Plotinus the ego is "a fluctuating spotlight of consciousness", a description emphasising its variability and lunar, rather than Saturnian pole. Perhaps the clearest description of this ego is to be found in Rudhyar, in An Astrological Study of Psychological Complexes (p.14):
At the level of the consciousness of a particular person the structuring function of the self is assumed most of the time by the collective patterns of the society and culture in which the child is born. These patterns control the development of the consciousness of the infant, and together with the influence of the parents and of the environmental conditions of life they mold, directly or indirectly, positively or negatively, what we call the ego of the child.
...Though in its most obvious aspect the ego can be called a social construct, it also appears to the consciousness as its centre, its ruling principle. Yet it has only a very relative degree of permanence and it can easily become identified only, or mainly, with some function or emotional reaction of the organism-as-a-whole. A man says 'I', and by that refers in most cases actually to the ego, and not to the fundamental power which sustains and guides the development of his total being - but which does so at an unconscious level. The 'individual selfhood' of a man exists, most of the time, only at that deep level. What appears on the surface of consciousness - somewhat related to this essential individuality, yet usurping its true function without being aware that it does so - is the ego.
The ego and its urge to be different should be referred mainly to Saturn, for Saturn is the principle which builds everywhere boundaries isolating the inside from the outside...but Saturn also brings consciousness to a focus...
Saturn needs the Moon in order to act; for while Saturn is form, the Moon represents the life contents gathered within, and structured by this form.
We can say that the Moon represents experience, emotional reaction and libido, Saturn the particular psychic entity resulting from these experiences and containing them. Saturn is also concrete reality which confines the Moon contents and limits them to a particular ego. The ego is thus a temporary conscious focus of life energies as a separate entity, and embraces the Moon-Saturn polarity. The coincidence in fact therefore of the cycles of the progressed Moon and Saturn is one of the wonders that confront us in astrology and compel an entirely different attitude to reality from the one prevailing today.
Carrying this further, we can see what Alice Howell means when she writes: "Saturn is the process through which the ego wakes up to the responsibility for consciously creating its own reality"; for these three factors, responsibility, reality, and centre of consciousness are all meanings of Saturn, and responsibility (an idea resulting from the concept of "free-will") can be seen as identical with the consciousness of reality, or just consciousness, and all three are contained in this one archetype. In the same way the father-image plays a necessary part in structuring an independent and self-sufficient ego, and belongs to the same process.
"The ego-sense operates as a function of the development of consciousness", and: "The ego is that which structures the operation of the mind and...the conscious feeling-responses of the person". The development of a strong ego therefore is an essential part of the development of consciousness, as a container or a framework; but it is a means to an end, not the end itself. Whereas "the self is the centre of power in the whole organism: the ego is...made possible by the integrating power of the self" (Rudhyar) 29. While Jung's concept of "individuation" is a synthesis or integration of conscious and unconscious, Rudhyar emphasises that the self, in the sense of an integrated whole, is "an evolving realization", the individual self, and it involves a synthesis with consciousness - that is, with ego; it is not a regression to the "mana" personality, or undifferentiated spirit. He suggests that some of the methods of meditation as commonly practised may arrive only at a sublimated ego, which does not include all that is unconscious. The ego may be emptied, but the container is still there; we have not transcended the orbit of Saturn. Another way of looking at this is that consciousness and the ego are not developed, but only by-passed. "Activity is the basis of existence" - powered by the Sun, and expressed initially as Mars in Aries; but existence implies wholes of existence, or individual cycles (Saturn). The ego is not something with which to identify; but a fully developed ego is required to reach "an ever broader consciousness of universal patterns of order". This is "the marriage of power and consciousness", a combination of the Sun-Saturn polarity. Jung remarks that the yogis "attain perfection in samadhi, a state of ecstasy, which so far as we know is equivalent to a state of unconsciousness. It makes no difference whether they call our unconscious a 'universal consciousness'; the fact remains that in their case the unconscious has swallowed up ego-consciousness. They do not realise that a 'universal consciousness' is a contradiction in terms, since exclusion, selection and discrimination are the root and essence of everything that lays claim to the name consciousness". 30 With extension, the contents lose in clarity of detail. In the end, all embracing but nebulous. We may also note: "The purely Nirvanic state is a passage of Spirit back to the ideal abstraction of Be-ness which has no relation to the plane on which our Universe is accomplishing its cycle." (H.P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine).
By power in this context is meant vital power, or divine power, that energises the whole organism, that manifests through the self, but far transcends the individual. It is the power of the "godhead". "The Will to Power" on the other hand as postulated by Adler, as the opposite pole to Freud's Eros, is an ego-centric Mars; that is, power conceived of in terms of ego, or confusing the ego with the real source of power. This results in ego-inflation, which is a very different thing from an illumined consciousness.
In Jung's thinking, and in accommodation to the accepted scientific approach, the history of humanity is an ongoing struggle to develop consciousness out of the instinctual and animal level of life. The opposite way of looking at it, which is that of all earlier cultures, and our own up to the time of the second fish, is in terms of the Fall into polarity from a state, not of animalism but of pre-polarity, and of participation in the world of cosmic or divine consciousness, or of spirit (the Garden of Eden). In either case Saturn is the principle involved. In the first case it is a question of the gradual evolution of a conscious ego out of barbarism or out of unconsciousness. In the second, the gradual loss of spiritual awareness and distancing from divinity in the interests of developing a differentiated consciousness and sharper definition. This is involution and this concept, as distinct from evolution, is developed by Rudhyar in the sixth and seventh chapters of The Magic of Tone and the Art of Music:
"Involution of energy into a multiplicity of material forms (or organized fields of activity) and the subsequent evolution of formally defined life-energy toward a state of 'perfection' in which all essential aspects of what had been released (or created) in the beginning of the cycle of being are actualized and fulfilled in harmonic interrelationship and interpenetration."
In terms of sound and the harmonic series the involutionary aspect is the descending series of the differentiation of Sound, which at its source has a unitary character. The evolutionary aspect is represented by the ascending series of overtones arising from a fundamental, the latter having its origin in the material vibrations produced by a voice or instrument. These two aspects correspond exactly to the ideas of Logos and Eros.
If Saturn in the earlier stages represents a collective type of consciousness, the emphasis is on its aspects of, in the first place, tribal deity and "father-god", then on the human representative of this in tribal chief, government or king, the law, traditions and taboos that regulated society - the principle of social regulation and circumscription. Later, with Christianity, the differentiation of the individual "soul" or spirit must lead to and power an individual consciousness or ego. As each new development has to go to extremes before being brought back on course or compensated, this resulted in the second thousand years, when Satan was set free, in the complete identification with matter and ego, and the chaos of separate, uncentred, competing and meaningless egos where we are now.
When things go off track and become over-developed or exaggerated in some particular direction, or one-sided, there is, in psychological terms, a compensation through a reaction by life itself, or the unconscious, in the form of an enantiodromia, or swing to the opposite. Thus capitalism leads to communism and statism. The negative side of these developments becomes manifest and even takes over. In physical terms this might result in extinction as with the Dinosaurs; in psychological terms in psychosis or schizophrenia, the dominant state of affairs with us. In the case of the individual the obverse or negative side of the ego is what Jung called the shadow. This is the "dark twin" of the ego, and consists of the personal unconscious. Here we find memories of events and also components of the psyche, often quite natural desires or characteristics, instincts and functions that the ego does not wish to acknowledge and has repressed, i.e. rendered unconscious, deliberately, or forgotten about, either because the memories are painful, or traumatic, or also because they do not fit in with the conscious or social ethic that the ego wishes to, or is brought up to adopt. These contents however have a strong emotional influence or charge of libido, and they are not disposed of by being repressed. On the contrary, this treatment causes them to fester in the unconscious and turn poisonous. They turn into psychological complexes and hidden compulsions which break out in times of stress and overturn the conscious, ethical and rational world that the ego has constructed for itself according to its one-sided policy of "out of sight out of mind". "What we call 'rational'", says Jung, "is everything that seems 'fitting' to the man in the street". 31 But the irrational cannot be suppressed and eliminated. The personal unconscious is the area Freud discovered and with which his psychoanalysis is concerned, and contains all the hidden desires and motivations that remain infantile because locked away and undeveloped. The inferior function of the personality is at home here, because this is the relatively undifferentiated and undeveloped function that is associated with complexes, and tends to manifest in an infantile, irrational and compulsive way that is difficult for the ego to control, and is not part of the desired and imagined persona. This is the inferior side of the personality.
In the same context Jung says: "The shadow is the primitive who is still alive and active in civilized man, and our civilized reason means nothing to him". 32 This is putting a decisively evolutionary interpretation on it, and giving it a Jekyl and Hyde character. He refers to the shadow as an archetype, but this is not consistent with its association with the personal unconscious, which consists of very variable and individual contents, not very far from consciousness. Archetypes belong to the much deeper collective unconscious, and Jung left an ambiguity in this area.
In so far as the shadow is the negative or undeveloped side of the ego, it must in astrology be associated with Saturn. In effect, when Saturn in the horoscope is in the element representing the inferior function, or when it is in the twelfth house or the unconscious, and afflicting the luminaries, or associated with an anima or animus complex, or otherwise disaffected, it takes on its traditional character of "the greater malefic" - Mars being the "lesser malefic". As a component of the psyche, as distinct from a malefic "influence" from outside, this obviously means the shadow, and fits all of Jung's requirements for that definition.
If the shadow is to be archetypal it must be connected with the collective unconscious, and here it does not seem to appear in its own right, either in the Greek pantheon or in personified form in dreams or visions. Personified shadow-figures tend to be negative manifestations of other archetypes; to be forms, for example, of the Trickster, the obverse side of Mercurius. Mephistopheles can be placed in this category, as well as traditional forms of buffoon, Pulcinella or Harlequin, and Jung actually says in one place: "If we take the trickster as a parallel of the individual shadow..." 33 He says a little later: "The one standing closest behind the shadow is the anima who is endowed with considerable powers of fascination and possession." There is a light and a dark anima, and both anima and animus can become shadow figures, or associated with the shadow, and produce in their victims amazingly poisonous manifestations. But here we are talking of collective figures or a collective shadow; and the same is true of trickster figures - "Whereas the contents of the personal unconscious are acquired during the individual's lifetime, the contents of the collective unconscious are invariably archetypes that were present from the beginning". 34 Elsewhere Jung writes of "the rationalism of modern life, which, by depreciating everything irrational, precipitated the function of the irrational into the unconscious". But once there, "it works unceasing havoc, like an incurable disease". 35 It amounts to the disease of meaninglessness, and not seeing beyond Saturn. The natural energy (libido) turns destructive, and the archetypes appear in the forms of all the monsters and demons of the unconscious. These frightening shadow figures "may be called forth by the fear which the conscious mind has of the unconscious". 36 The snake symbolises the collective unconscious - instinctuality and darkness; and Satan was the snake in the Tree of Knowledge. But while it equals the shadow, "the serpent and its chthonic wisdom form the turning point of the great drama", 37 the power of Kundalini, which starts from instinctuality, and which, likened to a serpent, ascends the spinal chord to the head chakras, and brings an explosion of light, or turns into a sun.
This tells us once again that "the great drama", that is, the Fall, and the problem of evil, is all about the Sun-Saturn polarity. "There is deep doctrine in the legend of the fall: it is the expression of a dim presentiment that the emancipation of ego-consciousness was a Luciferian deed". 38 Jung mentions that the shadow as an archetype is "absolute evil". In this capacity it would be opposed to God as absolute good. The shadow, as Saturn, is the Fall into Matter, and Matter is equated with darkness; to Plotinus Matter is absolute evil. To understand the Fall, and to understand this whole polarity, we have to think in terms of involution and not of evolution, and astrology as an empirical science requires this. In the solar system, the Sun is the spiritual pole, and even though the system is bounded by Saturn, and polarity prevails within it, it does not prevail in the Sun, where matter as such does not exist. If on the Moon there is nothing above the mineral state (something like absolute matter?), on the Sun there is nothing below the electronic state (fire). In the sublunar sphere we have the blend of both. Nor does polarity prevail in higher worlds outside the orbit of Saturn. The next planet or principle outside Saturn, Uranus, stands for "the suspension of polarity", which is Döbereiner's appropriate key-word for this.
Jung refers in one place to "the archaic features of the self", 39 which is in conformity with his definition of the self as the whole psyche. If we equate the Sun in the horoscope with Essence or Spirit, the whole psyche is the result of the interaction of two poles of a polarity, and the "archaic features" then come under Saturn. There is some confusion in the concept of "the self", which is Jung's term, but without the concept of spirit, which Jung avoids, it is not at all clear how this "self" could arise. He describes it as a union of opposites, and as "the whole range of psychic phenomena in man". If it is a union of conscious and unconscious, this would be the ego plus darkness, which is Saturn plus Saturn. There would be no place for the "Christ within". Jung does not conceive it as the atman, the component of universal divinity; but he does say that, empirically, "the self appears as a play of light and shadow, although conceived as a totality". This can only mean a union of spirit and matter, or Sun and Saturn, and this is a developing process, developing with the level of consciousness. Spirit is undifferentiated, and ego is tied to the material world; but the "self" is the combination of both.
Saturn as the principle of crystallization, or separation into separate objects, results in matter, whereas the Sun is the principle of Unity, and the sublimation of matter. It is in the field of this polarity that the "self" has to evolve. The two poles are represented by geometrical figures: Unity, by a circle; Matter, and the principle of polarity, by a cross, or a quaternity, which can also take the form of a square, and the number Four. Four is the number of Saturn, and of life on earth, but outside this realm and in the spiritual worlds, or the world of forms, the number three prevails, and the Trinity is complete. There the material body and the function of sensation are not relevant. It is said that avatars cast no shadow, and Jung points out that Christ has none. On earth the number of wholeness, in the psychological sense, is four, because the fourth component is the shadow. The three conscious functions have to be integrated with the fourth, which is in the unconscious (i.e. the fourth has to be made a conscious part of the ego). Then we have wholeness of ego-consciousness, which must be united with universal divine wholeness. Jung cites the quaternity and the circle as symbols of the individuation process itself - by which he means the realisation of the self. This process therefore has to be represented properly, not as one or the other of these symbols, but as the cross within the circle - the Celtic Cross. This means spirit incarnated, or descended into matter, or united with form; or in other words, embodied in an individual, and resulting in an enlightened being, a bhodisattva, or spirit united with a differentiated consciousness, which requires both light and darkness.
To achieve this there must be a fully differentiated earthly consciousness through the differentiation of all four psychological functions, contained within the form and structure of ego, and at the same time, or united with, a consciousness of spirit. Thus a strong ego is needed, and one informed with spirit, but not mistaken for spirit in its own right. The ego can identify with rationalism, get carried away with its own image, as a clever trickster figure; or it can identify with the hero, mistaking the means for the end - ego as hero, instead of hero as transcending egos. The ego needs spirit as its motivating power, but it is only a provisional form, and if it mistakes the form for the power it becomes a mere inflated balloon. But it needs a strong structure as a vehicle for this power, and has to maintain its own integrity. As a jellyfish it will be useless. In so far as it is informed with spirit it can become a wise old man in the end; or it can be oblivious to anything but the outside world of third house consciousness and remain a "simple Simon", as Jung puts it. It has to be self-sufficient, individual, and no man's lackey. It will not do to be "self-sacrificing" to the point of neglecting its own integrity and task of self-development. Yet it must not be egotistical, and see itself as anything more than a means to a higher end, which is that of all humanity. It must be compassionate, but know how to balance the short term against the long term, to reconcile the means and the end. The correct performance of this balancing act constitutes the twelve labours of Hercules, or passing through the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the skills to be developed and the snares, temptations, obstacles and monsters to be overcome on the path of initiation.
Jung was much preoccupied with the symbolism of three and four in the context of psychological wholeness. In Aion he goes into various complex quaternities in Gnostic symbolism, starting from the basic marriage quaternio which, in a man, to the triad of the masculine subject, the opposing feminine subject, and the transcendent anima, adds as the fourth factor the Wise Old Man. In a woman the fourth, opposite the animus, is the Chthonic Mother.
This archetype of the Wise Old Man is a very interesting one from our point of view. It appears significantly in the dream of a young theological student quoted by Jung 40 in the form of a white magician dressed in black and a black magician dressed in white. The black magician follows a black horse and is led to a desert where he finds the keys of paradise. Jung comments : "The black horse and the black magician are half evil elements whose relativity with respect to good is hinted at in the exchange of garments." He then goes on: "The two magicians are, indeed, two aspects of the wise old man, the superior master and teacher, the archetype of the spirit..." Astrology however enables us to see clearly that the archetype is Saturn, the master of polarity, one of whose standard meanings is old age, and specifically an old man. Jung remarks that the dreamer "was not in the least aware that the father of all prophets had spoken to him in the dream and had placed a great secret almost within his grasp". (Italics ours). Saturn (Cronus) was indeed the father of Jupiter (Zeus),the archetype of the prophet. "The old man in this dream is obviously trying to show how good and evil function together." He mentions as other well-known personifications of this archetype Neitzsche's Zarathustra, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, and "if the name 'Lucifer' were not prejudicial, it would be a very suitable one for this archetype." 41
In The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales Jung looks at numerous examples of the appearance of the old man, very commonly as a dwarf, or "little old man", closely connected with the earth - in one case "King of the Forest" and green. Mythological forest gods, such as the Finnish Tapio, seem to be forms of the Saturn archetype, reflecting the telluric aspect of Saturn, close to the earth, and his colour is moreover green. The Wise Old Man makes an appearance when the hero is in a seemingly hopeless predicament and gives him support, and teaches him the virtues of self-reliance, resolution and concentration, all qualities of Saturn. "In one Balkan tale...the animal ridden by the old man..is a goat" - pointing to Saturn's sign Capricorn. In these tales too the old man is often duplex - "has a wicked aspect too", or an ambiguous character - "witness the extremely instructive figure of Merlin". He can appear "mingled with the shadow" as magician or demon, reflecting the chthonic wisdom of the serpent. Merlin is perhaps the most excellent example of this archetype. "Begotten by the devil and born of an innocent virgin", Marie-Louise von Franz shows that in some striking respects he is paralleled by Jung himself, who was very decisively born under Saturn. 42 As he was also born in Leo, the sign of the Sun, he himself represents the individuation polarity.
"The archetype of the Wise Old Man first appears in the father", and "the hero's father is often a master carpenter or some kind of artesan". 43 Like Saturn, he teaches wisdom through suffering and experience. Both are sometimes associated with the ass: "The ass pertains to the second sun, Saturn, who was the star of Israel and is therefore to some extent identical with Jahweh". 44 Saturn is seen as a dark sun, but also as Lucifer; with his rings, he is described by the astronomer Patrick Moore as "from our viewpoint the most splendid sight in the heavens".
The astrological archetype Saturn enables us to see all these figures, psychic components and qualities in their true significance and as a complex of inter-related symbols. The different facets of the archetype allow it to include different manifestations that sometimes seem anomalous: thus the attributes structure, form, polarity, are conditions of consciousness and add up to define the conscious ego; while Time, age, father, self-sufficiency, law-giver, concentration become personified as the Wise Old Man. At the same time Saturn as the principle of materialisation, solidification and Matter represents darkness and the shadow. Jung says of the figure of the Wise Old Man: "Sometimes it can hardly be distinguished, if at all, from the shadow". 45 The ego is very shadowy, and can easily unite with the demons of darkness (unconscious factors and impulses turned negative). The Old Man can also have a daemonic side, like the Chthonic Mother; but is not equivalent to the ego. On the contrary he is an archetype out of the collective unconscious, while the ego is a temporary formation on the upper level of consciousness, and a personification of the subject; that is, a very subjective phenomenon, unlike an archetype. It is very possible however that the Wise Old Man represents the union of darkness with light, and is therefore the archetype of the "self", in the sense of the individuated consciousness. This would be Saturn in the rôle of Lucifer.
Jung lists the archetypes or psychic components that regularly appear as human figures, and suggests that they be characterised as dominants.
These are: 46
The shadow
The wise old man
The child (including the child hero)
The mother ("Primordial Mother" and "Earth Mother")
as a supraordinate, therefore daemonic personality
and her counterpart, the maiden
The Anima/Animus.
Although he qualifies this list as "among them", and adds that "these are far from exhausting the statistical regularities", he does not nevertheless mention any others, and remarks in a footnote: "To the best of my knowledge, no other suggestions have been made so far". He does not go any further in distinguishing this particular class of archetype, but observes elsewhere: "as we all know, science began with the stars, and mankind discovered in them the dominants of the unconscious, the 'gods', as well as the curious psychological qualities of the zodiac: a complete projected theory of human character." 47 Apart from the qualification "projected theory", which a knowledge of astrology must correct to "empirical science", he has put his finger on it and, as we have now seen, these dominants correspond exactly to the planetary archetypes of the solar system. In the above list he includes the hero with the child - Mercury and Jupiter, though the hero as adult, or as Prometheus, is a separate figure. In Symbols of Transformation however he has a whole chapter on the Hero, "The Man of Joy and Sorrow" (Gilgamesh), the sun-hero who is semi-divine. He begins: "The finest of all symbols of the libido is the human figure, conceived as a demon or hero". The Hero is also the Prophet, or the latter is another aspect of the archetype, and both heroes and prophets in Greek mythology are related to Zeus, and in astrology to the planetary archetype Jupiter. Another and more shadowy type of prophet, which merges into the magician, or even demon, comes under the archetype of the Wise Old Man, an aspect of Saturn.
Under the mother Jung brackets a "Primordial Mother", with daemonic characteristics, but this is not the "Terrible Mother", or "Chthonic Mother", sometimes called the 'Devouring Mother". The witch is a form of this figure. In Hiawatha "the magician is the personification of the water of death, which in its turn stands for the devouring mother. This great deed of Hiawatha's, when he conquered the Terrible Mother (and death-bringing daemon in the guise of the negative father...". 48 The Terrible Mother here seems to represent the Underworld, or the whole realm of the collective unconscious. She is Hecate: "as guardian of the gate of Hades and as the triple-bodied goddess of dogs, she is more or less identical with Cerberus". "She is the mother of all witch-craft and witches". 49 As associated with Hades she is of a different order from the Olympians - Hades and Poseidon, or Neptune, though brothers of Zeus, ruled their own different realms, and had in the first instance been swallowed by Cronus, which Zeus escaped. Neptune rules the oceans, which also symbolise the unconscious, while Hades, or Pluto, is the lord of the underworld of the departed shades, the realm of the dead. These are chthonic gods, and outer planets, powers prevailing outside the earth realm, ouside consciousness. We have to assign the Terrible Mother to the planetary archetype Pluto. Uranus also is outside the realm of Saturn. He is the sky god, and rules the air sign Aquarius, so that we have the sky, the oceans and the underworld outside the orbit of life on the solid earth, or the world of material forms. These planets belong to a higher octave and another world.
In the cycle round the Zodiac and the houses, having entered and adjusted to the material world in the first quadrant, in the fourth we should be getting ready to leave it, having completed the course. The astrologer who best understands this sequence of houses and quadrants is Wolfgang Döbereiner, and he says that in the fourth quadrant we arrive at "the ultimate significance of what has been effected in our lives." We enter into eternity. The tenth house in the Natural Zodiac is Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, and here is shown "the final and lasting significance of individual development", the individual's "calling", or "dharma" - though not career, for he earns his living in the sixth house, of work. Here extra-personal criteria are binding. After this is the eleventh house, and the eleventh sign, Aquarius, of which the principle is Uranus. In the second house, and Taurus, we enter into duality, and in Aquarius we come out of it. Hence this sign and Uranus represent the suspension of polarity, the suspension of subjective motives and opposites, and the "elevation out of the lowlands of the emotions". The symbol for this is the flight of a bird, and the key-word transformation. In the following house, the twelfth, and Pisces, the sign of Neptune, the last stage of the cycle, we realise "the effective truth behind the phenomenal world". Here there are no bounds, no need to rationalise or adapt to or depend on the material world, as we do in the opposite sixth house. Here is the "dissolution of the bonds of conformity and rationality", the suspension of reality, and the key-word transcendence.
Jung cites Plotinus: "The One, Uranos, is transcendent; the Son (Kronos) has dominion over the visible world; and the world-soul (Zeus) is subordinate to him". 50
Elle est retrouvée!
Quoi? l'éternité.
C'est la mer mêlée
au soleil.
(Rimbaud)
REFERENCES - Chapter Six
1. Jung: Symbols of Transformation p.177.
2. Jung: Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche par.756.
3. Ibid par.772.
4. Ibid par.787. See also Alexander Ruperti in: Cycles of Becoming, which gives an excellent and full account of all the planetary and seven-year cycles.
5. Jung: Symbols of Tr. par.340.
6. Robert Graves: The Greek Myths p.156.
7. Rodney Collin: The Theory of Celestial Influence p.290.
8. Jung: Psychology and Alchemy p.335.
9. Jung: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious p.177.
10. Ibid p.166.
11. Jung: Psychology & Alchemy p.338.
12. Jung: Archetypes p.348.
13. Ibid p.167.
14. Dane Rudhyar: Occult Preparations for a New Age p.163.
15. This precise formulation is due to Wolfgang Döbereiner.
16. Thomas Ring: Astrologische Menschenkunde Vol.3 p.104.
17. A.C. Harwood: The Way of a Child - The Rudolf Steiner Press.
18. Jane Roberts: The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events p.259.
19. Jung: Mysterium Conjunctionis pp.38/39.
20. Ibid pp.96/97.
21. Jung: Aion p.46 Italics ours
22. Goethe's work on colour was developed further by Rudolf Steiner and some of his
followers. Much material on the spiritual significance of colours is to be found in
his Three Lectures on Colour, and in several booklets by Gladys Mayer.
23. Jung: Myst.Conj. par.333.
24. See appendix.
25. Plotinus: First Ennead, 8th Tractate. (Tr. Stephen McKenna).
26. Jung: Symbols of Tr. p.177.
28. Jung Psychological Types p.425, Definitions.
29. Rudhyar: The Planetarization of Consciousness . In Chapter 3 of this work Rudhyar develops in more detail the relation of Self and Ego.
30. Jung: Archetypes p.287SS.
31. Jung: Myst Conj. par.343.
32. Jung: Myst. Conj. par.342.
33. Ibid par.485.
34. Jung: Aion p.8.
35. Jung: Two Essays p.94.
36. Jung: Aion p.225.
37. Ibid p.256.
38. Jung: Archetypes par.420.
39. Jung: Ps. Types p.425 under Ego.
40. Jung Archetypes P.34 also p.216.
41. Ibid p.37.
42. Marie-Louise von Franz: C.G. Jung - His Myth in Our Time pp.275-287.
43. Jung: Symbols of Tr. par.515.
44. Ibid p.401.
45. Jung: Two Essays par.154.
46. Jung: Archetypes p.183.
47. Jung: Psych. & Alch. p.245.
48. Jung: Symbols of Tr. p.401.
49. Ibid pp. 369/370.
50. Ibid p.138.
PART FOUR: BEETHOVEN
BEETHOVEN
The Outer Planets and the Embodiment of an Archetype
The first thing to understand about Beethoven is that he was one of the great prophets of the close of the Piscean Age, and of our time, and that, as he said himself, he was "an instrument through which divine rays might be disseminated among mankind", or "an instrument of cosmic forces". Goethe said "...it is immaterial whether he speaks from feeling or knowledge, for here the gods are at work strewing seeds for future discernment". To anyone who is sufficiently aware, and also aware of the power of music, this is evident in his works, which show a superhuman quality on a level that can only be compared with Bach, though in him it belongs to a different culture-period, the classical one of Western Culture. The music, and the message, of Beethoven are still not understood even by musicians, except in very rare cases, and one of these is the book by Wilfred Mellers "Beethoven and the Voice of God", reviewed at some length by me in the "Music Review" (Vol.45 Nos 3/4). In fact musicians generally and certainly musicologists are no more, but perhaps less aware than other people that, to quote Beethoven himself, "music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend", and he spoke of "the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy." "Every thought in music", he said, "is related to unity" - a statement that should resonate with astrologers, and it is astrology alone that is in a position to corroborate the relationship of Beethoven to cosmic forces.
"An avataric being", writes Dane Rudhyar in "Occult Preparations for a New Age", "lives in the act he performs, in the message he reveals. He was born for that purpose, and in many cases his life is a sacrifice, simply because it is not really 'his' life." "The line of transmission of power (the power released through him) may reach much further toward the galactic centre". The galactic centre in 1770, Beethoven's birth year, was at 23.20 Sagittarius, and at 24.46 in 1850. Beethoven's Sun was at 24.43 Sagittarius, and Mercury at 22.40, so that the G.C.= the mid-point between Sun & Mercury. It is interesting to note in this connection that Brahms' moon is at 23¡ Sag. and Mozart's Moon is at 17.48 Sag., within 50 minutes arc of that of Beethoven. According to Rudhyar, the seed period of the New Age began in 1844, with its announcement by the Bab, and the discovery of Neptune in 1846, and a new cycle starts with the release of cosmic power. Beethoven died in 1827; his symphonies, in particular, are imbued with a superhuman and daemonic energy that bears no relation to his individual and physical existence, which indeed was a sacrifice in every sense.
It is above all in the symphonies that Beethoven's relation to this new release of power, and to the imminent change of cycle of human development and of astrological age, is apparent. First in the "Eroica" symphony, in E flat, the first of the really significant Beethoven symphonies, on the Promethean theme of the archetype of the hero, who is also prophet and bringer of fire. In the Fifth Symphony (C minor, like the piano sonata op.111, and with the same key signature as E flat, of three flats) the end of the Piscean Age is announced - "Thus Fate knocks on the door" (Beethoven) - with the four hammer blows on which the whole symphony is based. It is the Last Judgement for the Old Age and the existing civilisation. In the remaining symphonies, except for the Sixth, which is virtually a tone poem on a great river - no doubt a synthesis of the Rhine, with which he grew up, and the Danube of Vienna days - Beethoven is developing the cosmogony and vision of the New Aquarian Age. The contemplation of the starry heavens is a constant subject and source of inspiration with him, 1 and the setting of Schiller's Ode (originally to Freedom, not Joy) had become his intention at a comparatively early stage. He had in his notebook a quotation from Kant:
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more frequently and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.
The italicized phrase was written down by Beethoven as a guiding principle. The Seventh Symphony is plainly a dress-rehearsal for this setting, without the words (human part); the Eighth a sketch in a lighter vein. Finally in the Ninth the first three movements could have been designed as a musical experience of the cosmogony of the Secret Doctrine, and the words of Schiller's Ode in the Finale make this explicit, as well as the Aquarian motives of universality and the Brotherhood of Man. Beethoven had connections with the Masonic and Rosicrucian societies, who propounded the same theme, as did the Bahai movement in Persia founded by the Bab.
It is now coming up to two hundred years since the Eroica Symphony was first performed, and we have not quite reached the turning point of the ages, any more than an understanding of the message and language of these symphonies, notwithstanding their excessive familiarity. The discovery of the three outer (trans-Saturnian) planets is likewise a sign of the times, and symbolises the approach and need of a very radical change of level. In Beethoven's time only Uranus had been astronomically located, by Herschel in 1781, but they have always existed as unconscious archetypes. They represent a transcendence of earth-consciousness, of Saturnian limits of time and space, and a change of mental and spiritual level. In Beethoven's horoscope Uranus, Neptune and Pluto form a Grand Trine, a configuration in which they are all in approximately 120¡ trine aspect to one another, forming a special circuit of inter-related energy flow. Although this configuration prevailed over a period and in the horoscopes of every person born during that period, owing to the slow movement of these planets, it does confirm Rudhyar's idea of a seed period beginning around that time, and the end of the Hindu Kali Juga, or Dark Age. In Beethoven's case the Grand Trine has a special significance since it falls in the fire houses, the first, fifth and ninth, the houses of creativity, forming the "triangle of fire", of which Stephen Arroyo has much to say in Astrology, Karma and Transformation: "an energy flow often verging on the transcendental...Pure being and becoming", and a spiritual purity of expression "where the native has ceased to identify his ego with the creative forces flowing through him." As this fits Beethoven so well, it gives strong confirmation of the house positions in the horoscope, and Neptune in the fifth house is entirely appropriate for designating music as the medium of creativity.
Uranus lies close to Beethoven's Ascendant, as is also the case with Edgar Cayce; Alan Oken writes of this position: "picking up and transmitting electrical impulses from higher planes of consciousness". 2 It seems very likely that Beeethoven was clairvoyant in certain respects and could see spirits in nature - an impression we get from the E flat quartet op.127. "Nature was like food to him, he seemed really to live in it" (reported by Charles Neate who visited him in his later period.) It is also certain that in terms of ordinary manifestations of Uranus rising, Beethoven was independent, revolutionary and eccentric in the highest degree.
The three outer planets are at 12, 14 and 16 degrees of the earth signs, in the order, going round the horoscope, of their distance from the Sun and of their discovery. They represent the three stages of transformation or initiation, with Pluto, the planet of death and regeneration, symbolizing the destruction and elimination of the old cycle, in November, but seed formation prior to rebirth in Aries in the new cycle. These planets and their meaning can be precisely related to the trilogy of string quartets, op. 131, 132, 130, which constitutes Beethoven's most profound, most esoteric and virtually final work - though naturally this is still very far from being being understood, as is even the rather obvious fact that the quartets form a trilogy based mainly on one four-note "seed" motive. The B-flat quartet, op.130, though bearing the earliest opus number, forms the obvious third of the trilogy in respect of meaning, and corresponds in every way to the symbolism of Pluto. The feeling of chthonic power inherent in it, as well as the character of dissociation, have been noted by other writers. The four-note motive in its darkest form is the introduction to this quartet, while after the Adagio, a "dark night of the soul", its apotheosis is reached in the Finale, the Great Fugue, a work that has to be described as super-human. It is astrology and that Grand Trine of outer planets that provides the key to these quartets. 3 While the symphonies announce the change of age on the collective level, the quartets show the process of transformation at the level of the individual.
In the first edition of "Brief Biographies" published by the Astrological Association of Great Britain, Beethoven's chart is given with Ascendant at ten degrees of Taurus, and referred to J.M. Thorburn, who was professor of music at Bristol, and a keen astrologer. He gave a lecture to the Association in its early days on "The Horoscope of Beethoven", as rectified by himself; but he is no longer living and I have been unable to find out how he arrived at this version or to obtain a script of his lecture. There is no official record of Beethoven's day or time of birth, only of baptism, but Thayer says in his biography (the standard biography) that "it is in the highest degree probable that Beethoven was born on Dec. 16th 1770". To an astrologer the internal evidence of the chart should speak for itself and be at least as reliable as recorded or remembered birth times, which are almost never correct, and as Charles Jayne pointed out, all charts have to be rectified, and are initially speculative. 4 It is part of my object here to do this for Beethoven.
Rudhyar in "The Astrology of Personality" mentions 15¡ of the fixed signs as "the gates of avataric descent" in occult tradition. These signs correspond to the quaternity of the vision of Ezekiel, - The Bull, the Lion, the Eagle and the Angel, and the four Evangelists. Beethoven has Saturn on 15.43 of Leo, and I think it probable that his Ascendant is on the fifteenth degree of Taurus. Tad Mann, who claims to have developed a method of dowsing for Ascendants, came up with the same result. I have found the degree delineations of Adriano Carelli uncannily accurate in so many cases that I find them generally the best method of rectification where the character of the subject is sufficiently known. He gives for 15¡ Taurus: "Ideas original, daring, uncommon; his intuition may even foreshadow the future.." A Sybil - "his mind will ever run to the hidden causes and the living root of phenomena. A deeply religious being..." A "somewhat uncouth being, lost in his mighty visions and more or less indifferent to love..".."such a being may well end by being looked at as a forerunner or prophet by posterity." All this exactly fits Beethoven. For the 21st degree of Capricorn which goes with this Ascendant as Midheaven at the latitude of Bonn, he has: "Symbol - A master holds open between his hands an ancient book in Hebrew characters." Among other things in his delineation are: "his mighty work will serve the needs of progressing mankind more than his own personal interests", and "this degree may purport initiation...the Great Work...will produce a master rather than a teacher." 5
If we assume these degrees for the present we shall find plenty of confirmation when we study secondary progressions. In the meantime we may note that the lunation type in the birth-chart is that of the Balsamic Moon, in the last tenth of the lunation cycle - in fact the Moon is only about seven degrees behind the Sun - the transition or seed state, in the Hindu tradition of cycles. Rudhyar has delineated eight lunation types corresponding to phases of the Moon, and of this he writes: "in the highest types prophetic and completely turned towards the future...Sometimes he feels possessed by a social destiny, or led by a superior power. He is more or less aware of something greater than personal selfhood, hence may accept sacrifice or martyrdom for the sake of the future." The psychological type to which he belongs is the introvert intuitive. This is the type characteristic of the prophet and seer, and one may cite Bach, Blake, Jung and Rudhyar as belonging to it, while Sagittarius as we know is the sign of the prophet and the hero.
The ninth house in the natural Zodiac comes under Sagittarius, which is the principal sign associated with Jupiter. In Beethoven's horoscope Jupiter is found exactly on the cusp of the ninth house, the point carrying the most intensive ninth house implications, which fits this symbolism so exactly that one can hardly think it a coincidence. In Beethoven's case this carries a still deeper meaning through his identification with Prometheus. This runs through his creations, from the Prometheus ballet to the Eroica Symphony, the E flat (Emperor) piano concerto, to the C minor sonata op. 111 (Atlas, the brother of Prometheus - an association made by Beethoven himself). 6 Prometheus is the mythical hero, and we have seen that Jupiter corresponds to the "archetype of the hero", in Jungian terms, as does the key of E flat in Beethoven, and the ninth house. 7 There is an extraordinarily compelling confirmation of the Prometheus association in an essay on Beethoven by Dr. Eugen Kolisko in his book Reincarnation and Other Essays. His first paragraph runs:
"What are the most striking features of Beethoven's biography? There are two - One, that he was one of the greatest of all composers, but deaf. And the other is the discrepancy between the sublimity of his musical creation and the wretchedness of his personal life."
Dr. Kolisko was a medical doctor and an anthroposophist, and he points out the connection between Beethoven's choleric temper (gall), his extreme indecision in practical matters, and the liver; and that ear, liver and limbs (movement) form one organic system connected with sound vibrations:
"The fact that he was so undecided in ordinary affairs shows that the stream of force which should lead to decisive action, which really starts from the liver, and conducts energy into the limbs, was hampered in its action. Ear, liver and limbs cooperate together, they form one organic system, through which the human will expresses itself."
"The real 'Beethoven' music only begins at the moment when his deafness begins" (the year 1800), and "He could never have created such music if he had been healthy":
The musical faculties are by no means unconnected with the body. Rather, they build up the body...What is a normal process in the ordinary person, was a terrific battle in Beethoven's organism...He conquered illness by transforming the direction of its forces. He lifted them up to the heroic. But his body had to be forsaken."
He died of cirrhosis of the liver, although not addicted to alcohol, and his liver had become shrunken and his ears scleroticised - the inner ear is embedded in what is called in German the "rock-bone". Jupiter and Sagittarius have always been asociated with the liver in astrology, and the parallel is exact with the mythical Prometheus, chained to a rock, with an eagle coming every day to devour his liver. Dr. Kolisko cites a "very well-known musician" who reported that in a conversation with Rudolf Steiner the latter said: "Beethoven is Prometheus" - meaning an actual reincarnation of Prometheus; or, as we would say, an embodiment of the archetype.
All this shows astrologically in the opposition from Mars in Gemini to the three most personal planets in Sagittarius. Mars represents muscular action and the limb system, Gemini and Mercury ears, eyes and the nervous system, and Sagittarius liver, giving a striking demonstration of the connection stated by Dr. Kolisko, while Mars opposite Sun is of course choleric. The liver is also under Virgo, and hence Mercury 8 , and Neptune from Virgo forms the apex of the mutable T-Square - ear, liver and eyes, which also gave much trouble, linked in a disharmonious configuration to Mars, the limb system.
Afflictions to the Sun and Moon, such as the Mars opposition, are generally indicative of health problems, while here Mercury is between them and receives the exact opposition from Mars, within one minute of arc. Mars comes from Gemini, Mercury's sign, and Mercury and Gemini are directly linked with the nervous system. A contemporary surgeon from Salzburg, Dr. Alois Weissenbach, wrote that "his nervous system is irritable in the highest degree and even unhealthy - the harmony of the mind so easily put out of tune. He once went through a terrible typhus and from that time dates the decay of his nervous system and probably also his melancholy loss of hearing". In medical astrology all the signs, hence parts of the body, in a given quadrature or mode are linked and can interact. In Beethoven's last illness he had inflammation of the lungs (Gemini), liver (Virgo, Sagittarius), and feet (Pisces). He had "atonic dilatation of the stomach", excess fluid in the tissues and disorders of the lymphatic system (Moon square Neptune), bowel irritation (Mercury, ruler of Virgo, opposite Mars), and inflamed stomach, gastric ulcer and acute gastric trouble (Moon opposite Mars). In Ronald Harvey's "Mind and Body in Astrology" we find: "Menirs Disease. This is assumed to be due to a form of degeneration of the labyrinth of the inner ear. Often there is inner ear deafness and tinnituss. This would appear to involve symbolically the sign Taurus or its associated house, the second." The Mars opposition is from the second house, and Saturn (sclerosis) is exactly square the Taurus Ascendant - and we know that the throat (Taurus) is connected to the inner ear. The second house also represents one's resources, bodily and mental, and the eighth often shows sickness, and death, and the causes thereof, so that the situation could not be more graphically represented than it is here. The eighth house, in addition, can show a giving out and self-sacrifice, and its emphasis is common in the case of very public figures. It is also of course the house of death and regeneration, the Plutonic theme so extraordinarily brought to life in the B flat quartet, op. 130. It is the house of autumn, of seed-formation, and the metamorphosis of a dark germinal motive is the basis of the quartet trilogy. Pluto itself is in the ninth house, which BrunhÜbner says is "perhaps the most favourable position by house..Here it indicates evolution, exaltation, refinement, genius....It attracts towards extreme methods, untrodden domains...Pluto here points also to clairvoyance, ingenuity, the finest sense...In the higher types, they are idealists, spiritual fighters and pioneers, occultists.."
Ronald Harvey, on p.125 of the book mentioned, describes eight focal points round the horoscope, of power or potential, and in that of Beethoven all the planets are on such focal points, except Saturn, but this is on 15¡ of Leo instead. Taurus is preeminently the sign of music, the most powerfully sensation-based of the arts, and ruled by Venus, most appropriately here in the tenth house and in Capricorn. Rudolf Steiner in "Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy" correlates Taurus with "Orientation to the utterance of Sound". That Beethoven was Taurean in behaviour and appearance cannot be doubted by anyone who has read Thayer - it is the only sign that could fit him. Kolisko refers to "the stubborn energy" inherited from his father's side. His pupil, Ferdinand Ries, wrote: "In his behaviour he was awkward and helpless - (the Mars-liver connection, and retrograde Mars) - his uncouth movements were often destitute of all grace. He seldom took anything in his hands without dropping and breaking it". Also: "On the whole he was a thoroughly good and kind man, on whom his moods and impetuousness played shabby tricks". "Reservedness, mistrust, often towards his best friends, in many things want of decision...Gives free vent to his feelings on the spur of the moment, intercourse with him is a real exertion, at which one scarcely can trust oneself" (Stefan von Breuning, friend from boyhood) and all of which is characteristic of Mars opposite Sun-Moon-Mercury. In his later years: "Venom and rancour raged within him. He defies everything and is dissatisfied with everything and blasphemes against Austria and especially against Vienna" (von Bursy). The most reliable portraits, especially those by MÖhler, and his heavy and stocky build, show a Taurean, and the portrait of him as a young man shows clearly a certain type of Taurus features.
He was not able to manage money, extravagant, and had no idea of the value of money (Wegeler) - Mars afflicted in the second house. The only planetary placement not so far accounted for is Saturn in the fourth house, and of this Sakoian and Acker say: "heavy responsibilities incurred through the home and family...a strugggle to achieve domestic security and provide for their families...In the last years of their lives they often become recluses." Beethoven's father was an alcoholic, and while he was only a boy he was in the position of having to support his mother and two younger brothers, and took on responsibility for them. And he was a recluse at the end.
I have purposely used sources for delineations that have proved in general authoritative and very reliable, in order to avoid the common practice of giving subjective or biased interpretations, custom-made to support one's case. We have yet to consider the important retrograde and unaspected planets, which may seem strange at first sight, but in fact are perfectly in keeping with Beethoven's personal circumstances. For delineations here I use mainly Bil Tierney's "Dynamics of Aspect Analysis", which I have found one of the most valuable and accurate reference books in the repertoire.
Mars retrograde exactly fits Dr. Kolisko's diagnosis. He was not an astrologer, and even dismissed astrology as having "no scientific basis", yet Tierney's astrological diagnosis repeats him virtually word for word. He makes the following points: Energy internalises readily, via subjective tension and internal body processes. Less able to relax. More psychological and deliberate. Motivated by unconscious factors. Prefers to act in seclusion. Hostilities, resentments and anger stored up to dangerous concentrations. Passionate, somewhat destructive reactions. "For some who unduly repress their tensional forces, the physical body may end up being the focal point for such overcharged energy. It can thus suffer inflammations and infactions of a more complicated, resistant nature than if Mars were direct." Physical vitality can be impaired through directing energy towards the more intangible make-up. Exhaustion is apt to occur. Also inner stamina can be stronger, as though there is a compulsion to be active regardless of bodily needs. For spiritual development, Mars retrograde can give the stamina and strength needed to explore inner conflicts. Can be driven to work towards impersonal objectives or world causes, without considering self-centred needs.
With Venus retrograde: "The individual is not as prone to behave in a conventional social manner simply to attain approval and acceptance from others...He tends to turn within for emotional fulfillment..suggesting a need for seclusion and solitude. He may possess a fuller awareness of inner and abstract beauty. Because of this, true satisfaction from love and emotionally based relationships may come later in life (if at all)." Rudhyar refers to Venus retrograde and also evening star in connection with a 'deeply mystical temperament", and sometimes a strong emphasis on artistic creation, while Ruperti suggests the self may be free from the compulsive demands of life-instincts (reproduction), and can live according to its own truth - in a spiritually free way, for higher spiritual purposes. Beethoven was constantly falling in love, but it never came to anything, partly because of his lowly birth, in terms of social status, and partly no doubt because of his unattractive physical appearance in later life. Venus is about to turn retrograde (stationary retrograde), and of this Tierney says: "a stationary retrograde planet will take on a more subjective, internalizing disposition, as the individual is about to begin to focus upon the psychological implications of the planet with growing concern. This phase of the planet simply shows more concentrated intensity, creating greater inner impact that would the same planet when merely retrograde". Venus is also unaspected: "Without aspects, the capacity to attract is limited to a single focus of interest...Affectional interests are not to be actively pursued - he can be very passive here, yet very intense in his response." Exactly the case. He is "less driven to reflect and evaluate before acting..little restraint or moderation in Venus impulses...Divorced from social function, but derives intense satisfaction from an exclusively valued area." His deafness cut him off from society, a circumstance which he felt very strongly: "I must live alone like one who has been banished" - (from the Heiligenstadt Testament) - and "forced to become a philosopher already in my 28th year" (Jupiter in the ninth in Capricorn is also unaspected.) This document is a record of near despair - De profundis clamavit - a Gethsemane experience. "Patience, I am told", he writes, "I must choose as my guide" - the theme of the slow movement of the "Hammerklavier" sonata - a much later work. It has often been remarked that this condition of Venus and the absence of any points in water in Beethoven's chart is very strange for an artist and a composer of "highly emotive" music; but music is primarily experienced through sensation, and earth signs, especially Taurus, and Beethoven is overwhelmingly earth, and fire (intuition), with only Mars in air. Water signs are characteristic of painters, and air signs of poets. It applies to the medium, not the message. Neptune is in the earth sign Virgo, in the house of creativity, and exactly trine the Taurus Ascendant. This spells music, the most sensation-centred of the arts. It may also be noted that Venus is the planet of personal emotional relationships, the Moon and water refer to feeling on the personal and conscious level (or personal unconscious), the sub-lunar sphere, and, in spite of frequently expressed opinions to the contrary, there are no personal emotions in Beethoven's music, unless we allow the slow movement of the "Hammerklavier", but even here they are transcended by patience. Neptune stands for feeling on a trans-personal or transcendent level, on the level of the collective unconscious, or the ocean of space; and it is quite remarkable how Beethoven's music seems to bear no relation to his personal life or affairs in this world, and in the middle of the most harrowing circumstances he habitually produced music of an absolutely opposite kind and completely detached. The best and purest example of this transcendent and Neptunian level of feeling is the slow movement of the A minor quartet. It is extraordinarily intense, but not of this world. In popular language one would call it religious feeling, as opposed to emotions arising from one's personal circumstances in this world which as such have no place in art in any case - a fact which is very seldom understood.
Unaspected Jupiter also describes Beethoven's situation. According to Tierney, it affects "judgemental abilities", and in relationships and mundane affairs he was suspicious and very prone to mis-judgements. "He may appear detached and mentally remote" - described by his early friend and protector Madame von Breuning as his "raptus". While well-aspected Jupiter is "worldly wise", unaspected it is "highly idealistic, yet innocent and unassuming in many areas of his existence". He is "disconnected with socially observed moral or religious standards" - his disdain of etiquette is one of his most salient characteristics. "A loner in his search for higher meaning or ultimate truth. However his vision could be very unique because of this".
It remains to cite for astrologers secondary progressions confirming the angles of the chart. These are very numerous, and so I give below a selection of some of the most interesting, which include solar arc directions - in this case the arc coincides with a day for a year, - reckoned by the mid-point system and delineated from Ebertin's "Constellation of Stellar influences". The others are standard secondary directions and include converse directions. A is for Ascendant and M for Midheaven, p (progressed), con (converse) or r (radical), and where none of these is given it means solar arc.
REFERENCES
Beethoven
1. See especially the "Rasumovsky" quartets, op. 59, as a whole, and the slow movements of both the seventh and ninth symphonies.
2. Alan Oken, on p. 509 of Complete Astrology.
3. I have gone into this in detail in a musical analysis of the three quartets, which has not been published, but would be out of place here.
4. The idea that everything has to be "proven" would oblige one to throw out the whole of astrology without further ado, and most of scientific theory as well; but the erstwhile god of "objective truth" died in the early part of this century, and everyone knows that each generation's dogmas are superstitions to the next.
5. Andriano Carelli: The 360 Degrees of the Zodiac, published by the American Federation of Astrologers.
6. The main themes of the first movements of the Eroica symphony and the E-flat piano concerto resemble one another and are strongly suggestive of the glyph of Sagittarius, the arrow aimed at the beyond.
7. In the Tone-Zodiac worked out and published by me in the Astrological Journal, Spring 1984, Sagittarius comes out as the key of E-flat.
8. See Harry F. Darling M.D., The Essentials of Medical Astrology, p.9. (Published by the A.F.A.)
APPENDIX I
The seven stages of manifestation, of involution and evolution, or of the descent from spirit into matter and the ascent again to spirit, are shown in the following diagram, adapted from that given in "The Secret Doctrine". This applies in principle whether referring to planets themselves (Planetary Rounds), or stages on our present material planet (Terrestrial Rounds), or to human "Root Races". In all cases there is a progressive condensation or materialisation through levels one, two and three, down to the fourth, which is the visible and physical and most material level. This is the bottom of the curve, the lowest frequency, after which there is a re-ascent to spirit back through the same levels, and stages five, six and seven. This represents "the Fall", a process which follows these stages, and not of course a once-off event, though the fourth stage is where we hit ground, so to speak, within the realm of Saturn, and where we find ourselves now: we are in the fourth Round in our present stage of development, though there may be fifth-rounders among us.
The three levels can be taken as: 1. Spirit 2. Mind 3. Life.
These would correspond in Plotinus to:
1. The Intellectual Principle (Spirit) or Archetypal World
2. The Intelligible Universe (the Ideas, or forms) - the Intellectual or creative world.
3. The All-Soul (or the generative Soul) - the Substantial or
Formative World.
The Secret Doctrine by H.P. Blavatsky (died 1891) was the source-book of Theosophy, which she founded, and of the cosmogony propounded by Rudolf Steiner, who was head of the German branch of the Theosophical Society until he formed his own separate movement, "Anthroposophy". Madame Blavatsky's material, collected from ancient wisdom, on the "Root Races" of humanity, on pre-history and former civilisations, as well as on the geographical changes of the earth's surface which accompanied and determined these through periodic cataclysms, finds remarkably close corroboration as regards relatively recent times in the researches and large body of factual evidence, from Egyptian papyri, through geology, archaeology and palaeontology, to astronomical physics, put forward notably by Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, among others, but going back at least to the French zoologist Cuvier. It also fits in very well with psychological concepts of the "collective unconscious": "though 'the book and volume' of the physical brain may forget events within the scope of one terrestrial life, the bulk of collective recollections can never desert the Divine soul within us". (H.P.B.)
It seems probable and one might naturally conclude that P.D. Ouspensky would also have been acquainted with Blavatsky's publications, though we have not seen any explicit reference to this. But in any case Gurdjieff must have been in contact with the same or similar sources, associated with the Gobi desert, Tibet and Afghanistan. We have opened up to us a whole vast panorama of time and human evolution over millions of years, infinitely more inspiring than the present official picture of a few thousand years of civilization merging into a background of apes and Pithecanthropi. "You find what you are looking for."
APPENDIX II
Jane Roberts and Seth.
In a review of a series of audio cassettes the magazine "Parabola" (Summer 1990), published in the U.S.A. by the Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition, refers to: "a repertoire that sometimes dips to such oddities as "Seth Speaks" (italics ours). The "Seth" books are an example of "channelling", through the medium of Jane Roberts, and taken down by her husband Robert Butts. In assessing the validity of such material, the respectability or credibility of the process of channelling, and opinions concerning the possible source of such material, are not relevant issues, and the only criterion is the quality of the material itself and the level of knowledge transmitted. This involves being in a position to judge for oneself. It is likely that the reviewer in Parabola, one of the co-editors, was merely conceding to prejudice, without being acquainted with the Seth material itself; but much of what is transmitted by Seth is fully consistent with the conclusions arrived at in the present work, if often expressed in different language. More of it is such that it could not be known by a contemporary person within the material world, while still being consistent as a possible consequence or extension of our conclusions, though beyond the range of our present conceptual capabilities.
An example of this is the idea, frequently alluded to by Seth, of multidimensional possibilities: "For all versions and possibilities of each event must be actualized in the limitless multiplication of creativity" (Seth: Dreams and Projection of Consciousness, p.237). This is exactly Ouspensky's concept of "the sixth dimension", but nobody else, to our knowledge, has come near such an idea. Seth's teaching on choice in the actualisation of probabilities, and thence the possibility of changing events, does not contradict our equation of free-will with consciousness. Above all, Seth sees beyond the time-barrier, which we do not, and explains many things about dreaming that could not possibly be known, even by our most sophisticated psychology of the unconscious. If Seth explains things we do not understand and makes sense, while extending our understanding, we may profit by it, taking it for what it is, and apply the criteria of Spinoza in evaluating it.
POSTSCRIPT
CONSCIOUSNESS AND AWARENESS
A friend very much involved in Eastern, especially Hindu philosophy has drawn my attention to the fact that the word consciousness is used in his context in a sense very different from that in which it is used here. He has kindly outlined for me seven "states of consciousness" taught by Yogananda:
1. Turiya - totally aware of nothing. Very rare indeed and only experienced by most after death.
2. Unconsciousness - blissful unawareness of surroundings, but aware, to an extent, of our existence and how well we sleep.
3. Consciousness - alertness of mind and brain to all information coming into the mind and the five senses.
4. Semi-superconsciousness - slightly aware beyond the confines of the the body (intuition strong here).
5. Superconsciousness - able to see the inner workings and outer workings and surroundings with X-ray vision for a considerable distance in six directions around us.
6. Christ Consciousness - feeling one's presence in reality as being within all parts of vibratory creation, to know what is happening on other planets and in all creation. Can dematerialise and materialise our own bodies at will.
7. Cosmic consciousness - We also feel ourselves present and one with all vibratory creation, and we become one with God beyond this. To attain No. 6 we have to stay in the death-like trance state of sapikalpa samadhi, but in this seventh state we can get up and move freely in the world, talking and working, and still be aware of the entire universe, and also "be one with the father" in the unmanifest regions.
If we take No. 3 above, we can substitute the word awareness, for it refers to a passive state of reception through the senses of material sense-impressions. On this level we are talking about sensation, in terms of the four functions. With No. 4 we get into intuition, which is still an "irrational" function, that is an objective or passive reception of information, though now received through the unconscious mind. The further higher grades described, from No. 5 onwards, can also be described as awareness, even if involving other "senses", or further or much deeper levels of intuition or unconscious perception. This means an awareness of realities other than the material, outside of space and time, a "suspension of reality" (Döbereiner), pertaining to Pisces and Neptune and the twelfth house of the horoscope. This is also the suspension of rationality, and of the conscious ego.
Though in ordinary usage the words consciousness and awareness are interchangeable and seemingly synonymous, for the sake of clarity the word consciousness could be confined to the faculty of active discrimination which we develop in and apply to the material world. Indeed precise definition and the correctly integrated use of language is of the essence of consciousness itself. Jung wrote: "By consciousness I understand the relation of psychic contents to the ego, in so far as this relation is perceived by the ego ... Consciousness is the function or activity which maintains the relation ... (It) is not identical with the psyche (Soul), because the psyche represents the totality of all psychic contents ..." (Psych. Types, Definitions). The ego is defined as the centre of consciousness and it is the sense of individual identity, and of separateness, as opposed to identity with the whole of creation. This last is a function of the "self", which is largely unconscious, and in fact is connected with the collective unconscious, and therefore not individual.
We come into the material world, the world of opposites, and of polarity, from a realm of spirit where we are not separate. In the realm of Forms or Ideas (Thought forms, Polotinus' Intellectual Realm) or at the level of archetypes, there is relatively little differentiation; the Forms are much more all-embracing, initially perhaps simple numerical proportions. It is only in terms of matter that these differentiate and crystallise into "the ten thousand things", the endless variety of forms and objects we observe in our material world; and it is precisely the relation to this differentiation that is the function of consciousness, and this includes the development of our own separate individualities and our relation to other similarly differentiated entities (egos).
Consciousness thus requires discrimination and definition, and the development of the faculty of perceiving differences, and then their inter-relationships. It is an experience of the multiplicity of forms possible in the material realm, while awareness is rather the experience of the underlying (and unconscious) unity in diversity. Consciousness is therefore mental and is the function of orientating ourselves as egos in the phenomenal world, and relating effectively to it, the province of the thinking function.
We have seen how astrology is a thought-system which makes this very clear. The third house of each quadrant of the horoscope is the functional and mental house of that phase of the cycle; the house of adaptability to the environment, and of the "mutable" signs. In the first two quadrants it represents Intellect (3rd house), and Rationality (6th house), both ruled by Mercury. In the third quadrant we have come above the horizon and we begin to bring in some supra-personal, that is spiritual awareness; the third house here is the ninth, where we reach (ideally) Understanding, and its principle is Jupiter. (These three precise terms are borrowed from Döbereiner); while in the fourth quadrant (12th house) in Pisces we again come out of or transcend the material world, having gone through its twelve stages of the development of consciousness. And this is the object of the pilgrimage.
The function of sensation is the awareness of the material world and provides the data for developing consciousness (knowledge), while the feeling function provides the motive power for this pilgrimage by the orientation of psychic energy according to an instinctive and magnetic (essentially unconscious) sense of values. Desire and valuation at this level are things of which we are very much aware, but they are independent of consciousness and are not consciously motivated. One is aware of them as an organism, not as an ego, they are again collective, and to do with the preservation of the species - they are biological. The subject of the pilgrimage is spirit or "the self", and it goes through this development towards conscious awareness. According to the stage of development, awareness to a greater or lesser extent can accompany the evolution of consciousness, and eventually intuition goes hand-in-hand with thinking, through the conscious appreciation, via symbol and archetype, of the interconnections between phenomena formerly perceived as separate and unrelated.
For development, or evolution, it seems that Time is necessary, as is Matter and the world of opposites, of darkness for contrast with light. These conditions of incarnation into the earth realm are archetypally represented by Saturn, which is also the principle of the conscious ego. Saturn is as it were the guardian of the threshold, on going in or out of our material world, the keeper of the gate. In the cycle round the Zodiac, after reaching Saturn's sign Capricorn, at the fourth quadrant, we come back again at the end to awareness, and transcendence of the material world through Uranus and Neptune (Aquarius and Pisces). In the Intellectual Realm (non-material realm) of Plotinus "there can be no memory, not merely of earthly things but none whatever; all is presence. There; for there is no discursive thought, no passing from one point to another" (IV 4,1). Time arises from differentiation of Life, from the fall from Unity (of the Soul) - "the life of the Soul in movement as it passes from one stage of act or experience to another". "Time is not to be conceived as outside of the Soul. Time is the activity of the Soul". And: "The Stars exist for the display and delineation of time". Night and day lead to duality, and Number. Change is only possible in Time. Space implies otherness, but the solar system, in "its very spatial movement is pivoted upon identity and resolves itself into a movement not spatial but vital, the movement of a single living being whose act is directed to itself".
The end of evolution is unity in diversity, of awareness combined with consciousness; in Jungian terms, of the integration of self and ego, which he calls Individuation, the development of an individual and differentiated Self, not just a collective one; in other words of self-awareness. This then is wisdom. We can say that the east has concentrated upon the development of awareness, the West upon consciousness and the discriminating intellect, and the rational manipulation of the material world - to the exclusion, eventually, of awareness. There is now much interchange between East and West and borrowing of each other's viewpoints and methods; soon there will have to be a genuine combination and of consciousness and awareness, though this is as yet not well understood on either side. In astrological language and in terms of planetary principles this means mediation between Saturn and Neptune, symbolised by Uranus, or intuitive thinking (higher thinking), the principle of Aquarius.
posted by editor @ 7:04 PM
2 Comments:
Farewell Michael.
January 9, 2012
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