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Cosmos
and Psyche
An Interview with Richard Tarnas
by Ray Grasse, Associate Editor for The Mountain Astrologer
In 1991, Richard Tarnas burst onto the literary scene with his
book, The Passion of the Western Mind, an epic overview of Western
thought from the ancient Greeks and Hebrews to the present. With
sales of more than 200,000 copies, it drew praise from academic
and literary quarters alike for both its insights and its eloquent
style. Mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote that it was the "most
lucid and concise presentation I have read, of the grand lines
of what every student should know about the history of Western
thought. The writing is elegant and carries the reader with the
momentum of a novel … It is really a noble performance."
What virtually none of its readers back then could have realized
was that Tarnas's book had originally been intended to be a multi-chapter
historical and philosophical introduction for a far-reaching work
on astrology. Books often have a mind of their own, however, and
these chapters grew to be a full-sized independent book on the
history of the Western world view, which Tarnas published separately
as The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That
Have Shaped Our World View. As soon as he finished that task,
he continued work on the astrological book, and this January it
will be published by Viking. Titled Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations
of a New World View, this book is the result of 30 years of research
and represents Tarnas's own unique contribution to the growing
body of cutting-edge astrological evidence and philosophy. What
makes the release of this volume such an anticipated event in
both the publishing and astrological communities is Tarnas's standing
in mainstream academia. His first book, Passion, has become a
standard text used in many universities in the United States and
Europe, and Tarnas is often invited to speak at scholarly conferences
around the world in fields other than astrology.
Tarnas was born in 1950 in Geneva, Switzerland and is a graduate
of Harvard University and Saybrook Institute. For ten years (1974–84),
he lived at Esalen Institute, where he was director of programs.
Since 1993, he has been a Professor of Philosophy and Psychology
at the California Institute of Integral Studies, often co-teaching
with his colleague and long-time friend, Stanislav Grof. In 1995,
Tarnas's short volume on the astrological Uranus, Prometheus the
Awakener, was published by Spring Books, receiving glowing reviews
from numerous astrological publications, including The Mountain
Astrologer. I spoke with him recently about his new work.
TMA: You once referred to your first book, The Passion of the
Western Mind, as a "Trojan horse," in terms of laying
the groundwork for your astrological writings for a general public.
What exactly did you mean by that?
Richard Tarnas: In 1978–79, I wrote a monograph entitled
Prometheus the Awakener, which by 1980 grew into a full book.
But in the course of doing a final revision of the book for James
Hillman’s Jungian press, Spring Publications, I came to
the decision that I should not publish it. That was because the
book was directed too much toward only the astrological (and Jungian–transpersonal)
community, and it focused too much on just one planet, Uranus.
I felt that what I really needed to do was engage the whole planetary
pantheon, all the planets, and write the book in such a way that
it could serve as a bridge to the much larger world of intelligent
readers who had not yet been initiated into astrology and who
could not imagine taking astrology seriously.
Later, I did publish a shorter monograph version of Prometheus
the Awakener. But as I took up the larger task of writing a book
that could serve as a bridge to the non-astrological public, I
started writing about the necessary concepts and the history of
those concepts that I felt readers would require to grasp the
evidence I would be presenting. I felt that people would need
to understand the nature of archetypes, starting with Plato, and
then how Aristotle's view shifted that understanding, and then
the role of Christianity, and how the Copernican revolution shaped
modern cosmology, and what depth psychology and Jung brought into
the unfolding drama, and so forth. But as I started filling in
the larger narrative to provide that kind of a history, it eventually
turned into a book in itself, and that was The Passion of the
Western Mind. In that book, I didn't explore or defend the astrological
perspective; rather, I included it in the narrative, just as any
good intellectual history of the West would discuss the role —
the quite important role — that astrology has played in
that history. But I did not examine the history from an explicitly
astrological point of view in that book.
When Passion was published in 1991, it was taken up by many universities
and colleges as a text. At this point it's used in — well,
I stopped counting quite a while ago, after 80 or 90 colleges
and universities were using it. And yet many professors and students
who are using it would never guess that it was written by someone
with an astrological perspective on all these developments. In
a way I never expected when I was writing Passion, I ended up
being invited to lecture at many universities and colleges, graduate
schools and seminaries — sometimes even to give commencement
addresses. So, in that sense, the book has become a kind of Trojan
horse because it has been embraced by thousands of people who
would not regard themselves as being the least bit open to astrology
and its possible validity. But many of them have been writing
me for years, asking when the next book is coming out. They're
really interested. So when this comes out, at least to some extent
there will be some surprises …
TMA: How exactly did you get into astrology?
Richard Tarnas: It happened in stages, and then rather dramatically. When
I was at Harvard, a Jungian analyst who was on the faculty of
the Harvard Divinity School happened to be the therapist for my
Radcliffe girlfriend; we became friends and met once a week for
conversations about Jung and Freud and European ideas and culture.
He had been trained by Jung and was Swiss by nationality. One
week, he came in and must have asked me my birth data, because
he started sharing with me something about my chart and where
my planets were. I had no interest in what he was saying —
this was just at such a different level of intellectual conversation
than what we usually enjoyed, when we talked about what I regarded
as more intellectually sophisticated and exciting topics. So,
at that point, I steered the conversation as quickly as possible
back to the usual channels of discussion. [laughs] After that,
I had no significant exposure to astrology for several years.
My interest in astrology was really catalyzed during the years
that I was studying and living at Esalen Institute in Big Sur,
California. As I was working with Stan Grof there on my doctorate,
we discovered, to our utter astonishment, that the most reliable
indicator of the kinds of experiences that people would have when
they were undergoing major psychological transformations or non-ordinary
states of consciousness — whether through LSD therapy (Stan’s
specialization as a psychiatrist for 20 years) or other powerful
forms of experiential psychotherapy — was transits to the
natal chart. No other method of psychological testing, such as
the MMPI or the Rorschach or TAT, had proved of any value for
that purpose. So, that was what initially began my research, and
after that it just grew. From early 1976, I started studying everyone
who was at Esalen, both those who lived in the community and the
people who were coming through for seminars. I did hundreds of
analyses in the earlier years and then extended the scope of my
research to famous individuals like Freud, Jung, Nietzsche, Virginia
Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Newton, Galileo, and so on.
Finally, I expanded my research to include a systematic examination
of correlations between the outer planetary cycles and major historical
events and cultural trends, reflecting the archetypal dynamics
of the collective psyche. To see how consistent those correlations
were was probably the most astonishing — well, it's hard
to say what was the most astonishing — but it radically
extended the range of correlations for me and expanded the power
of the astrological perspective and its implications. It wasn't
just an individual phenomenon; it was an extraordinarily vast
orchestration of cosmos and psyche, linking the planetary movements
with the archetypal dynamics of the collective psyche. In the
meantime, I became close friends with Charles Harvey, the president
of the British Astrological Association in England, and Rob Hand,
both of whom visited me several times at Esalen. Their friendship
and support of my work from the beginning was important for me,
still in my twenties at that point. I only wish Charles were still
alive today — he waited so long and patiently for this book.
TMA: On the surface, your book appears to be especially concerned
with that aspect of things, the astrological cycles of history.
But on closer examination, it's clear there are actually several
different concerns unfolding simultaneously. How would you summarize
these?
Richard Tarnas: Well, the survey of historical correlations with the outer
planetary cycles definitely constitutes the largest set of evidence
that I present in this book, though I also discuss quite a few
natal charts and personal transits. But the book is actually dealing
with a number of things at once. On one level, it's a sequel to
The Passion of the Western Mind, so to a certain degree, it's
extending that analysis by looking at how our modern understanding
of the world was formed, how it developed. The new book looks
at the crisis of the modern world view in our time, and how the
disenchantment of the universe was connected with the forging
of the modern self, so that the modern cosmos and the modern self
actually arose together.
And a great price has been paid for the forging of the modern
self. A kind of spiritual crisis has been produced by the disenchantment
of the universe, and that spiritual crisis takes different forms.
One of these is the sense of existentialist desolation we see
underneath the surface of modern life, the result of living in
a random, meaningless cosmos. Another is the fundamentalist religious
antagonism to modern science and modern culture, the reactive
rigidity that we see so strongly right now, the unwillingness
to fully engage in the spiritual adventure of our time. Another
enormous consequence of this disenchantment is at the ecological
level, the global ecological crisis we see taking place, where
the entire planetary biosphere can be viewed by corporations and
policymakers as just an exploitable resource rather than something
possessing spiritual value, something that has moral value, something
to be regarded with a degree of reverence and respect, even religious
awe.
So, the book explores how the development of the disenchanted
world view and the crisis of the modern self are coming to a climax
in our moment in history, and I discuss the possibility that the
astrological evidence may have tremendous implications for that
crisis of disenchantment. For one, it would suggest that the disenchantment
of the universe is actually a temporary and local phenomenon.
It's a paradigm that emerged at a certain time and place in history
and has had a powerful grip on the modern mind, but it's not absolute.
It’s not the last word, science’s final decision,
the end of the story. The book sets out an analysis of the deeper
metaphysical and cosmological drama of our time, and it seeks
an understanding of our history that will make this crisis intelligible.
I don't think this enormous historical development has simply
been an accident: It's serving something larger in our collective
evolution. So, the book is simultaneously a look at the metaphysical
and cosmological drama of the current time, and it's also a look
at our long, unfolding history and the evolution of human consciousness.
TMA: You mentioned earlier about the book possibly serving as
a "bridge" to the larger, non-astrological community.
Richard Tarnas: Yes. I think most astrology books are written for the astrological
community, and are written with a framework of assumptions and
a language that are familiar to the astrological community and
to that community alone. What I tried to do was to write a book
that I felt could serve as a bridge between the astrological community,
on the one hand, and the larger general public of intelligent
readers, on the other — those readers who have never encountered
sufficient grounds for accepting the possibility that astrology
has any value or validity.
One other major impulse informing this book is that, as the evidence
unfolds and we explore different historical phenomena —
like the revolutionary decades of the 1960s and the French Revolution
during Uranus–Pluto alignments, or the great epochs of spiritual
awakening and births of new religions that have coincided with
Uranus–Neptune alignments, or the historical crises and
contractions of the Saturn–Pluto cycle — the book
serves as a kind of deep exploration of the human psyche itself.
We see how everything, from scientific breakthroughs and cultural
creativity to terrorism and apocalyptic beliefs, is shaped by
powerful archetypal complexes, which have both positive and shadow
sides that are enacted in history and individual lives. The existence
of these archetypal complexes points toward larger spiritual dimensions
of the human psyche and of collective human experience. So, in
some ways, the book is also a psychological and spiritual exploration,
as well as an historical analysis and a cosmological hypothesis.
It's a work with several different levels of motivation going
on at once.
In a sense, you could say I had four overlapping goals with the
book: I wanted it to provide a helpful initiation, for as many
people as possible, first, into astrology; second, into a spiritually
informed world view and cosmology; third, into the archetypal
dynamics of the collective and individual unconscious; and fourth,
into a view of history as an evolution of consciousness that is
itself an initiatory drama.
TMA: In addition to its potential impact on our collective world
view and on more practical matters like ecology, astrology also
holds fairly profound implications for the individual, too, doesn't
it?
Richard Tarnas: Yes. I think it provides the individual, first of all, with
a new level of self-understanding, as it provides a new order
of intelligibility for grasping the shape of one's life, the major
themes of one's personality and psychological development. All
sorts of diverse particulars in a person's life and character
are suddenly revealed to have a coherent relationship to each
other and to the cosmos. Things that may have seemed random or
arbitrary are now seen to be part of a larger unifying pattern
of meaning, which in turn is somehow grounded in the cosmos itself.
The astrological perspective reconnects the individual to the
cosmos. Many people who have entered deeply into astrology have
the unmistakable sense that the cosmos is in some way meaningfully
centered on the individual human being — and simultaneously
centered on many individuals, on all individuals, on the Earth
community. The individual person, as well as the Earth itself,
is seen as a moving center of cosmic meaning in a much more mysterious
universe than conventional modern science had assumed. So, one
is freed from the typical alienated modern condition of being
radically decentered in a random universe; instead, one feels
that he or she is a genuine focus of unfolding cosmic purpose
and meaning.
Such a perspective can be a great aid in psychological self-understanding.
For example, we can recognize tendencies to project certain meanings
onto situations or people, so we could be more on guard against
those tendencies when they get in the way of living fully and
authentically. Our capacity for critical self-reflection can be
empowered in a new way, because we have more tools — we
have the language of archetypal psychology, basically, but an
archetypal psychology that has now been given a radically expanded
context because of the archetypes’ cosmic association with
the planets.
What astrology does is to connect the findings of the depth psychological
tradition all the way from Freud and Jung right up to archetypal
psychology and transpersonal psychology — it takes that
entire tradition of insight, which is really one of the great
contributions of 20th-century culture, and connects it to the
cosmos. The result is, you can both understand your own unique
participatory inflection of these universal principles, and you
can also get a sense for the timing of them — when a particular
archetypal field will unfold in your life, the periods when they
are more problematic and challenging — like an ongoing archetypal
"weather report" on your life. It’s a kind of
surfing, in a sense — knowing your transits gives you a
handle on how best to encounter the particular set of archetypal
waves that are coming, how to ride them, when you would need to
be cautious about something, when you would want to be aware of
highly creative windows of time, and so forth.
TMA: You saw the tragedy of 9/11 as serving as a benchmark of
sorts in our collective attitude toward astrology, didn't you?
Richard Tarnas: Yes. That is something that a number of the advance readers
of my new book have mentioned to me. Generally speaking, astrologers
over the last several decades have become much more aware of the
importance of the larger outer-planet cycles as they are correlated
with the dynamics of the collective psyche, as they're evident
in history. For example, when Saturn opposed Pluto in this most
recent alignment of the Saturn–Pluto cycle, when it coincided
with 9/11 and everything that happened afterward, there was a
vivid awareness in the astrological community about the relevance
of that planetary combination to the specifics of what was happening.
This was different than in earlier years, when there was much
more focus on the individual natal chart. Often it was just the
personal horoscope, progressions, and transits that were attended
to, with relatively little focus on the larger picture except
in that subgenre of astrology called mundane astrology, which
was generally not given the same attention as was natal astrology
with its focus on the individual. I think this was part of the
whole individualistic and humanistic culture of modernity with
its overriding, and quite understandable, focus on the individual
human being.
But what has happened in the last 15 or 20 years has been a gradually
rising awareness of the relevance of the Zeitgeist, the collective
archetypal situation, and therefore the relevance of the outer
planetary cycles. This reflects the deepening transpersonal awareness
of our era. So, a number of my readers have mentioned how they
were able to look at their own lives in terms of the major outer-planet
cycles mentioned in this book, particularly those of the last
half-century, such as in 1968–69 when there was a triple
conjunction of Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto; these readers could
see correlations that were not as evident to them before, because
they had been thinking more in terms of the individual chart and
personal transits rather than the world transits relevant to the
collective psyche.
TMA: In the past, you've used a phrase that I think is useful
for all astrologers to keep in mind when reading charts, or even
looking at mundane (historical) patterns: "Astrology is archetypally
predictive, not concretely predictive." What did you mean
by that, exactly?
Richard Tarnas: I first used that phrase around 1980, when Rob Hand and I
were attending an NCGR conference where a speaker got up and made
a comment about how anybody who had planets at a certain degree
of a certain sign was virtually certain to experience sexual assault
or abuse of some sort in the course of their life. I was aghast
at both the astrological misconception and the psychological harmfulness
of such a statement. I watched a woman not far from me in the
audience turn pale as she heard this. I was so offended by the
speaker saying this and so concerned by the effect of her remark
that, at the break, I went up to the woman in the audience and
said that I believed that the speaker who made this statement
was fundamentally misunderstanding how astrology works, because
the nature of astrology is to be archetypally predictive, not
concretely predictive. That is, when we know what a particular
planetary alignment is, there is a wide range of ways in which
that particular transit or natal aspect can manifest in our life
and still be precisely reflecting the archetypal principles involved.
But you cannot predict exactly which way it's going to come out
in advance on purely astrological terms.
I believe that an understanding of astrology as archetypally rather
than literally predictive is both more true to the reality of
astrology and more empowering in its support of human autonomy.
It supports the ever-evolving capacity of the individual human
being, with her free will and reflective consciousness, to bring
forth the highest potential manifestation of a given archetypal
complex, rather than simply be a puppet of it. The beauty of the
astrological perspective and the gift it represents is that it
provides us with a capacity to know what energies are constellated
at a given time; this gives us a greater freedom to express these
energies and embody them in a more intelligent and life-enhancing
way, rather than just react or “act out” the archetypal
complex in a predetermined or fatalistic way.
The deterministic view was more characteristic of earlier eras,
though by no means was it universal even then. And to some extent,
it still influences a certain number of astrologers today. Considerable
harm is being done today by astrologers in counseling situations
when they presume more knowledge than they have, and they issue
definite, concrete predictions about what's going to happen, or
what a person is going to be like, or what kind of relationship
they will inevitably experience. Such predictions represent abuses
of astrology, which can be quite destructive in their consequences.
I strongly urge the astrological community to embrace an epistemological
humility, to recognize that the limits of astrological prediction
are closely intertwined with the greater richness of the archetypal
understanding and the affirmation of human freedom. This issue
underlies, at a deep level, one of the principal resistances that
the modern mind has felt toward astrology — a healthy resistance,
I might add. The modern mind (and the Christian mind before it)
wanted to preserve human freedom, and astrology seemed to deny
this.
It is possible to combine purely astrological cognition with some
kind of clairvoyant or divinatory faculty to make a more concrete
prediction. This was, I believe, more characteristic of earlier
eras and of those astrologers in India (and a few in the West)
who continue to practice in that manner. In the divinatory epistemology
that Geoffrey Cornelius has explored, using horary astrology as
a basic model, we have a helpful reflection on some aspects of
this issue. But I believe that the practice of most astrologers
today in the West, and the most influential texts of leading astrological
authors, are better described in terms of archetypal understanding
rather than literal prediction.
TMA: One of the great delights of your book was coming across
some of the fascinating synchronicities through history that I
hadn't been aware of before, such as those centering around Herman
Melville and his book, Moby Dick, or around the story of the Mutiny
on the Bounty.
Richard Tarnas: Yes. Well, let's take the latter as an example. One of the
major patterns I've been examining over the last 30 years is the
Jupiter–Uranus cycle. It's one that really stood out in
the course of history in an almost brilliant way: Every time Jupiter
and Uranus came into conjunction or opposition, there has been
this extraordinary wave of cultural phenomena having a quality
of either Promethean rebelliousness in society and politics or
creative breakthrough in the sciences or the arts. It's astonishingly
consistent, and I devote several chapters to that cycle in the
book.
Many years ago, after studying the Jupiter–Uranus cycle
as it manifested throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, I thought
it would be really interesting to go back further and see what
was going on in July of 1789, when the French Revolution began
with the fall of the Bastille. Back then, in the 1970s, we didn’t
have personal computers or ephemerides that preceded 1800, so
I had to wait each time for the mail to arrive with the charts
I would order from Neil Michelsen for distant dates prior to the
19th century. When the chart for July 14, 1789 arrived, I discovered
to my delight that there was in fact a Jupiter–Uranus conjunction
within 2 degrees of exactitude. This aspect actually started late
in 1788 and went through 1789, right up to September — the
entire 14-month period that commenced the French Revolution.
I then noticed that in the spring of 1789, when Jupiter and Uranus
were also closely conjunct, the Mutiny on the Bounty took place,
when Fletcher Christian and the mutineers rebelled against Captain
William Bligh soon after they left Tahiti. As many people are
aware, it's the most celebrated maritime rebellion in history.
And the fact that this would have occurred precisely under the
same Jupiter–Uranus alignment as the most celebrated political
rebellion in history (namely, the Fall of the Bastille and the
beginning of the French Revolution) seemed to me a marvelous synchronicity.
But apart from the astrological significance of this correlation,
such a coincidence suggested something else: It pointed to the
validity of Jung's basic conception of a "collective psyche,"
in which a particular archetypal complex can emerge in the collective
psyche simultaneously in different places within the experience
of different people, with no conventional causal connection between
them. For example, there were plenty of rebellions happening throughout
much of Europe right after the fall of the Bastille, under the
Jupiter–Uranus conjunction, but these could be seen as having
been at least indirectly set in motion by news of what had happened
in Paris. But that's not what was happening in Tahiti in the South
Pacific, since the Bounty had set sail from England in 1787. There
was of course no way then that any communication could take place
between England and the South Pacific. So, the evidence suggests
that there can be the simultaneous emergence of a powerful archetypal
complex in different places of the world, as if there were in
fact something like a collective psyche.
TMA: These correlations even continued unfolding afterward, didn't
they?
Richard Tarnas: Yes. As the Jupiter–Uranus conjunction was happening,
Uranus was also moving into a long-term opposition to Pluto, which
occurred through most of the 1790s. This opposition between Uranus
and Pluto, which might be thought of as the "Full Moon"
version of what we had in the 1960s under Uranus conjunct Pluto,
signaled a time of extraordinary revolutionary upheaval, sustained
empowerment of the rebellious impulse toward freedom, artistic
creativity and intellectual innovation, overthrowing constraints
of all kinds, and so on. These things were happening right across
the board in the 1790s as well as during the 1960s. And what's
quite striking is that, following the Mutiny on the Bounty situation,
we saw this other side of the Uranus–Pluto archetypal complex
emerge, where you have not just Pluto empowering and intensifying
the rebellious, emancipatory impulse of Uranus, but you have it
the other way around, with the Promethean impulse of Uranus liberating
and activating the Plutonic forces of the libido and the id and
the violent instincts. So, the period of the French Revolution
witnessed a sustained eruption of violent impulses as well as
an erotic emancipation very much like the sexual revolution and
the violently rebellious era of the 1960s. But what happened with
the mutineers after the mutiny is that Fletcher Christian and
the mutineers went with a number of Tahitian women and men to
another island, far away from Tahiti, called Pitcairn’s
Island; there, utterly isolated from the rest of the world during
that entire Uranus–Pluto opposition in the 1790s, they went
through a sustained period of intense conflict, violence, murder,
jealousy, and power struggle, which was a microcosm of what was
going on in Europe and in France, halfway across the world, under
the exact same planetary alignment. The result was a kind of laboratory
case of a continuing parallel synchronous emergence of the relevant
archetypal complexes.
TMA: In the last century, there have been some major revolutions
in astrology due to developments like modern psychology and the
advent of computers. Rather than ask you to try and predict what
sorts of developments may lie ahead for astrology — that's
a tough one when you consider that someone in 1850 could hardly
have predicted either the advent of psychology or computers —
I'll ask you this instead: What developments would you like to
see take place in astrology over the next 50 to 100 years, to
help take it to the next level, as it were?
Richard Tarnas: Well, I'd answer that on two different levels — one
more practical and the other more philosophical.
On the more concrete level, there are a couple of very promising
developments that have begun. During the Uranus–Neptune
conjunction that occurred in the 1990s and that we're really just
coming out of now, we've seen a rebirth of esotericism in many
forms; among these can be included the movement of astrology into
higher education and the universities. This has been happening
both in England and the U.S. During the past decade, I've taught
many graduate seminars in archetypal astrology for the California
Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and at Pacifica
Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, both of which are accredited
graduate schools. These courses, many of which I’ve co-taught
with Stan Grof, have been extraordinarily popular with the students
and have influenced the rest of their studies in psychology, philosophy,
or cosmology. Over in England, Nick Campion and Patrick Curry
have introduced astrology into the Bath Spa University College,
where they have accredited graduate master's and doctorate degree
programs, just as we have at CIIS — in their case, with
a focus on cultural astronomy and astrology. Liz Greene is now
joining them there as well. And we have Kepler College here in
the U.S.
This is the first time that astrology has been integrated into
higher education and the university system since the end of the
Renaissance and the early Enlightenment. That's an enormous development,
and I believe it will happen more and more because, at its best,
astrology represents an intellectually rich and rigorous mode
of inquiry that can shine a light on many aspects of our history
and culture. And the more that intelligent, educated people find
this a central part of their educational experience — in
many cases, one of the most exciting parts of their higher education
— the more it's going to shift the cultural attitude toward
astrology. It's not going to happen this year or next year, but
I believe there will be a real shift within the next generation
or so. Astrology's going to have a different cultural status than
we are accustomed to now. Also, the work of Rob Hand, Robert Schmidt,
and Robert Zoller over the same period represents another important
development: recovering the classics of astrology and translating
them from the various ancient languages into modern languages.
This is a tremendous act of historical retrieval, not unlike what
happened in the Italian Renaissance when the Humanist scholars
were recovering Greek manuscripts and translating them into Latin
and Italian and so forth — basically bringing them into
the contemporary culture in such a way that it helped to catalyze
the Renaissance itself. This is an enormous enrichment that began
under this Uranus–Neptune conjunction and will undoubtedly
continue.
TMA: What would be the more philosophical level of what you'd
hope to see ahead for astrology?
Richard Tarnas: Well, using what we already do see emerging, what I would
hope to see would be a more profound grasp of the richness of
the archetypal perspective in relation to astrology. The archetypal
perspective in many ways empowers astrology to reach a depth of
understanding that is not possible through mere “keywords,”
which has been the tendency in the past — you know, the
6th house rules work, health, servants, pets; Jupiter rules riches,
travel, philosophy, priests, and so forth.
In turn, astrology can empower the archetypal perspective that
has been developed in post-Jungian psychology, so this isn't just
something you're trying to discern only through your dreams or
your active imagination or analysis of contemporary films or whatever.
These archetypal dynamics, your dreams, contemporary films, and
the rest can all be illumined by knowing what planets are in alignment
at what time, what kinds of geometrical alignments are being formed
with respect to individual natal charts, and what similar archetypal
phenomena have been observed with the same planetary aspects in
other eras or other individuals.
I think the more that this power of the archetypal perspective
(particularly, its multivalent and multidimensional nature) can
be explored and developed within the astrological community, the
more it will go a long way toward moving astrology out of the
ghetto where it's been imprisoned. This ghetto of isolation and
scorn has been created partly by the disenchanted modern cosmos
and the skepticism of the modern mind, but to some extent it's
also been a self-created ghetto, sustained by some of the basic
intellectual presuppositions and methodological limitations of
the way astrology has been practiced over the years. I believe
that the development of an archetypal perspective could emancipate
astrology from that self-enclosed ghetto so that it can begin
to move into the center of culture, where it belongs.
© 2005 Ray Grasse – all rights reserved
Ray Grasse is author of The Waking Dream: Unlocking the Symbolic
Language of Our Lives (Quest Books, 1996) and Signs of the Times:
Unlocking the Symbolic Language of World Events (Hampton Roads,
2002), a study of the emerging Aquarian Age. He recently contributed
to the anthology, The Astrology of Film (eds. Bill Streett and
Jeffrey Kishner). He is currently an associate editor of The Mountain
Astrologer and can be contacted at jupiter.enteract@rcn.com
CHART CAPTION:
Richard Tarnas
February 21, 1950
12:30 p.m. CET (–1:00)
Geneva, Switzerland
Placidus houses
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