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Astrology &
The Soul of the World
by Pierz
Newton-John
"...
I saw the forms of serene ancestors, men and women for
whom the stars were both words and gods, for whom the
world and the sky and the earth were a vast language
of dreams and omens. "
Ben
Okri,
The
Famished Road1
Astrologers
often get caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one
hand, there is a part in all of us that longs for the
sanction of our society, for the status of confirmed
truth, even if we may sometimes enjoy imagining
ourselves as someone who "saw further" than
the rest. A lot of time and words have been expended on
apologias to science, attempting to justify astrology on
the basis of everything from "undiscovered
forces" to quantum theory, yet always falling far
short of anything resembling a scientific theory. On the
other hand, we buck against the whole philosophical
basis of science and decry scientists as blinkered
bigots.
It's a thorny problem: how can we justify
astrology, which ascribes psychic qualities to
non-living matter, when our whole scientific paradigm
denies the existence of qualities, per se, and believes
only in the reality of the quantifiable attributes of
the world?
To put
it simply, we cannot. We will never find a satisfactory
answer to the "how" of astrology, if we look for it in the
form of an objective mechanism. Purely mechanistic
explanations, however sophisticated, are unable to
address the domain of qualities and, therefore, fail to
touch on the essence of what astrology is about, as
astrological writers have frequently enough pointed out.
The core language of science is numbers. Ultimately, all
its reductions lead toward numerical formalisms.
Astrology, on the other hand, is founded in a language
of symbols, a language that is native to the imagination,
rather than the rational intellect. In the final
analysis, then, science and astrology are
incommensurable because the two systems have completely
different ontologies (ideas about the nature of being).
Yet
perhaps if we listen to what astrology teaches us about
the world, instead of seeking to find an explanation
that will allow it to fit into existing categories of
understanding, astrology could open the door to a
different way of knowing the world, in which qualities
are considered a primary and irreducible reality.
Astrology demonstrates that qualitative energies are not
mere projections; they are inherent to the world. They
constitute its soul.
This
statement is, of course, an unforgivable heresy from a
scientific standpoint. According to science, the only
thing that is real in the world is its material
structure. The qualities of things are regarded as
purely subjective constructs, insignificant by-products
of the brain's processing.
The
World Soul
Once we
make the leap of allowing the world to possess intrinsic
qualities, we must admit the presence of something akin
to an imagination in the world itself, an anima mundi,
or world soul. Our current materialist paradigm sharply
divides "imagination" from "world",
seeing the former as belonging entirely within the brain
of individual humans, the latter as consisting of
external, purely material structures void of any
imaginal dimension.
It is not only astrology that belies
this view. Flashes of clairvoyance or precognition and
striking synchronicities are phenomena that just about
everyone has experienced at some time or another. The
more deeply one delves into this kind of experience, the
more one is forced to recognize a dream-like
underpinning to reality. This dream world
interpenetrates our ordinary reality, present everywhere
and nowhere. Different traditions refer to it with
different terms. Sufi scholar Henry Corbin termed it the
mundus imaginalis, or imaginal world, coining the word
"imaginal" to denote a kind of reality that is
neither physical nor purely imaginary.2 It is the
realm within which the dead, the angels, demons, and
archetypal presences move.
Astrology,
the science of seeing the soul of the sky, is part of a
greater vision: that eye that opens each thing like a
poetic treasure, perceiving at work within it the
divine imagination that animates the world.
The
Australian aborigines refer to it as the
"dreamtime" by which they do not mean a
remote epoch, but another timeless dimension.
Consciousness researcher Stanislav Grof talks of the
"holotropic mode" of consciousness, which can
be accessed through psychotropic drugs or breath
techniques, within which one can travel freely through
time, space, and worlds beyond both. (3) For David
Bohm,
the innovative quantum physicist, it is the
"implicate order", a hidden order of reality
within which everything is connected to everything else.
(4)
Although
this world is inner in the sense that it is accessed
through an alteration of consciousness, it is not inner
in the sense of being confined within a physical
structure such as the brain or body. Nor is it inner in
the sense of being purely subjective, or unrelated to
the physical world. Indeed its relevance to astrology
lies precisely in the fact that it is contiguous at
every point with the physical universe and inseparable
from it. Every entity in the physical cosmos is also an
imaginal entity. It evokes imagination in a particular
way. It not only has a structure, but this structure
betrays a particular quality of being that we might term
its soul, even if it is a so-called inanimate object.
James
Hillman, in his essay "The Soul of the World,"
(5) has put forward a notion of the world's soul based
on the sensual presentation of physical forms. According
to Hillman the anima mundi or soul of the world is to be
perceived directly in the "inherent
intelligibility" of forms in the world. He argues
that every thing, place, or animal in the world, whether
constructed or natural, has a presence to the
imagination through its "physiognomy" as a
sensual form. The precision, freedom of spirit, and
fierceness of the eagle's soul can be read in the
aquiline form, just as the sensitivity, gentleness, and
reflectiveness of the deer are made manifest in its
movements and its whole presence to the senses.
According to Hillman, this expressiveness of physical
forms is the presence of soul in the world, and it is as
much present in architecture, technology, and designed
interiors as it is in the places and organisms of the
natural world. (6)
This
idea could lead us to a kind of radical extension of the
astrological principle, so that all things are possessed
of a certain "astrological" character. Just as
every stone has its minute gravitational influence,
every stone might also be a microcosmic astrological
planet, a living presence with symbolic and psychic
import. The astrological character of the planets might
be just one example of the presence of soul qualities in
the world.
The
Resonance of Imagination
Take a
moment to reflect on the environment around you right
now, and consider the qualities of all the various
objects in it. Consider how all these objects subtly
impress themselves on your imagination in a particular
way, as if they were planetoids in your personal cosmos.
You exist this moment within a psychic field, a tension
of qualitative presences. Our immediate environment is a
kind of micro-astrological cosmos which possesses a
certain feel that impinges upon us and which we also
affect through our own character as souls. Everything is
an originator of a unique qualitative influence, as the
planets are. Everything resonates with and within the
imagination.
Psychics,
poets, and artists possess a particular sensitivity to
this field of qualitative resonance in the world. Their
gifts are grounded in that sense. For them, the world is
not only a physical location, a structure
in which they exist, it is always also a place in the
imagination. They sense, in their different ways, the
presence of imaginal processes moving through the world
around them, not as something hidden, but as an
immediately apprehensible reality. It is this
soul-within-things that poets address themselves to when
they meditate on a particular subject, soaking it, as it
were, in the waters of their imagination until it
leaches some of its essence.
One
might object that we do not derive astrological meanings
from reading the character of the planets as revealed in
their appearances. Yet perhaps there is more in this
idea than one might at first think. There is an
appropriateness to the fluctuating, reflective shine of
the Moon and the brilliant, golden light of the Sun in
terms of their astrological symbolism. Likewise, Mars's
red desert surface seems appropriate to its astrological
character. Jupiter's turbulent, colorful surface could
be the one-eyed face of a monstrous, jovial god.
Saturn's sallow, muted sepia and the oceanic, mysterious
blue of Neptune also seem fitting. However, I am not
suggesting the reduction of astrology to mere
appearances. We need to feel presences at a more subtle
level, to attune to them, as it were, if we are not to
be deceived by appearance. As an example, a group of
people in a room together on one day may appear
superficially very similar to the same group on another
day, yet a very different mood may be present in the
room. Ben Okri has written that "moods are stories
unsaid, condensed in the air, untold."(7) In other
words, moods are the presence of hidden imaginal
processes.
Psychometrists
are capable of reading subtle impressions from objects
that allow them to garner information about the history
of the object. A particular subtle atmosphere clings
around places and objects that seems to carry condensed
within it a great deal of information. Accessing this
information is not a miraculous gift. It is merely a
question of relative subtlety of perception. There is not, in fact, a sharp dividing line between
gross physical perception and so-called psychic
awareness. One leads quite naturally into the other when
sensitivity is increased. This suggests, again, the
interpenetration of imaginal and physical realities.
I am
suggesting that astrology could be conceived in terms of
what might be termed "imaginal resonance".
This is the idea that the qualities of physical objects,
from "inert" rocks to plants and animals,
represent resonances with a fundamentally real world of
purely imaginal presences. I believe it is unlikely that
the Chaldeans first discovered the qualitative natures
of the planets by a process resembling in any way our
concept of empirical research. Rather, living as they
did in a cosmos in which imagination and world were
fused in an indivisible unity, I believe that the
Chaldean astrologer-priests were probably capable of
directly attuning themselves to the
stars, just as we, at a cruder level, are capable of
sensing the quality of a particular tree, place, or
person.
Synchronicity
and Subjectivity
I would
like to contrast this conception of astrology with the
popular explanation of astrology in terms of
synchronicity. Although the term synchronicity validly
describes a certain familiar
category of experience
the
uncanny, meaningful coincidence I believe it is an
inadequate metaphor for the workings.
Jung's
concept of synchronicity postulates an acausal
connection between the internal psyche and the world
based on a principle of like meaning. This idea was
enthusiastically embraced by astrologers as it allowed a
description of astrology outside the constricting terms
of mechanical cause and effect. Through his observation
of striking coincidences between psychic events and
external events, Jung developed the idea that a
mysterious nexus exists
between meanings in the mind and events in the world.
This idea was readily rendered into the service of
astrology: the planets did not cause a person to have a
particular temperament. Rather, human psyche and
planetary configuration were correlated by like meaning.
The mediating factor in this process, according to Jung,
was the archetype, a structure of the collective
unconscious that was, in some way, capable of
influencing or was,
in some way, capable of influencing or being
reflected in the course of objective events. (8)
The
appeal of such an idea to astrology is clear, yet as an
explanatory principle for astrological influence,
synchronicity has problematic implications. By taking
meaning as its core organizing principle, synchronicity
tends to subsume astrology in an introverted perspective
that orients itself toward the core of the human soul:
the Self as epicenter of introspection. Ultimately it is
this transcendental Self that is the hidden engineer of
synchronicity in Jungian thought, and thus, when applied
to astrology, the planets too are made to orbit around
this axis.
In her
book Jung and Astrology, (9) Maggie Hyde has expounded a
model of astrology founded on a radical extension of the
synchronicity principle. Hyde is one of a group of
astrologers, led by Geoffrey Cornelius, who is moving
away from an emphasis on "qualities in moments of
time", such as Jung originally argued for, to a
notion of astrology as divinatory ritual, similar to
other systems such as tarot or I Ching. She suggests
that astrology is founded not on any inherency of
psychic qualities within the planets themselves, but on
the mysterious way in which the objective world appears
to cooperate with our projections. The use of
astronomical tables, according to Hyde, is no more than
a part of the divination ritual; the connection between
astronomical events and the chart is not particularly
important, although she stops short of dispensing with
the ephemeris altogether.
This is
a radical diminution of astrology, not a revolutionary
advance. By internalizing the source of astrology,
turning it into a projection of the introverted soul,
astrology's fundamental value gets lost. Astrology has
the potential to attune us to our soul-level
participation in the cosmos. Once we turn astrology into
a form of projection, we abnegate the challenge to
redefine our view of the world in a way that allows the
world itself to be granted its soul; instead, the world
is compelled to rotate around the axis of our personal
psychologies. Rather than engaging in an act of
receptive dialogue with the cosmos, we forget the world
and concentrate on "personal stuff", thus
losing our connection to the cosmic dimension of the
personal soul. We turn away from the dark mystery of the
starry night and focus on our jejune paper-and-ink
reduction of it. Furthermore, astrology as divination
turns traditional astrology into a fait accompli with no
reason to question or rework its foundations, no
justification for research, no need or possibility of
revision. Astrology's rules become arbitrary and
self-justifying.
Detachment
and Objectivity
It is
certainly true, as Hyde argues, that the astrologer is
no detached observer in the process of reading the
chart. There are constant interpenetrations of symbolism
between client and astrologer that render the notion of
objectivity problematic. This is true of any area
involving psychic material; dreams become enmeshed, odd
parallel phenomena appear, the world itself takes on
dream-like attributes. Yet reading these phenomena from
a different perspective, we can take this not as
evidence that the world obeys our projections, but as
proof that we are part of the world's imagination.
Imaginal processes present in the world are enacted
through us and by us. We are participants and
co-creators in these processes, but not their ultimate
authors. The distinction between these two perspectives
may seem subtle, but the consequences are significantly
different. With the first interpretation we slide toward
a subjectivism that locates significance within and
reads confirmation of the importance of the subject in
the outer world. The latter interpretation leads us to
develop a disciplined focus on the imagination of the
world and our place within this matrix. We unite with
others and with the world and, in the process, come into
closer union with our own sense of soul.
We do
not need to link internal processes with external ones
via the artificial nexus of synchronicity, but instead
we can recognize an unbroken unity of soul in the world
within which our individual souls are inseparably
implicated. All of us are, in part, determined by the
broader movements of our culture, by the hidden presence
of our ancestors, by our immediate familial myths, and
by-the subtle but deep
infiltration of the qualities of our environment.
Individuation can only have meaning insofar as it takes
place within the matrix of these determinants, and there
are undeniable contextual elements even to the
individuation process itself. Different cultures and
times have very different concepts of the enlightened or
wise individual. All of this goes to show that world
soul comes through many channels of which astrology is
only one.
The
world we see around us is rich in resonance with all
these different levels. It is shot through with multiple
threads of imagination that lead back to hidden stories,
both historical and mythical. We can see the appearance
of startling synchronicity as the surfacing of these
threads that underlie the world and give it coherence as
an image or story. We can recognize in the synchronistic
event a confirmation not of personal significance, but
of one's indivisibility from the deeply interwoven
connections between things, a web of soul extending to
the depths of space.
Seeing
with the Soul's Eyes
Let me
reiterate the basic thesis of this essay for purposes of
clarity. Science, as we know it, fails astrology because
it recognizes only the reality of physical structures in
the world, not the presence of qualities. When we see
qualities in the world as real, we must recognize the
presence of an imagination that underpins reality. This
imagination, or soul of the world, exists as a hidden or
"implicate" order. Through their qualities,
physical things resonate with this hidden order within
which memories, spirits, and archetypal presences
reside. Thus, through their "imaginal resonance",
every thing in the cosmos makes manifest the enfolded
possibilities of the imaginal world and is a window into
other dimensions. This understanding provides a
framework within which astrology makes natural sense and
needs no further explanation in terms of mechanism.
In
previous articles, I have argued for the importance of a
living relationship with the night sky and for the
instatement of the Earth among the pantheon of
astrological planets.
Readers may discern a consistent trend in the ideas I
have been presenting. As suggested by the opening
quotation of this article, the astrology I envision is
about a sky and earth seen as a "vast language of
dreams and omens". This open-eyed and wonder-filled
astrology does not sever heaven from earth, for it
recognizes that earth and sky are part of the same great
unity. Nor does it get trapped within the narrow
confines of a set of linguistic signs, but refers
constantly back to the vast fact of the night sky. It
labors to open the doors of the stars anew every night
through repeated acts of imaginative effort.
The
world's soul is in desperate need of resuscitation. It
can be saved only through an awakening to soul both
inner and outer, a learning to see with the soul's eyes.
This is a reawakening of the hermetic sense that
perceives in the world multiple resonances of
imagination and metaphor. This vision can extend from a
way of seeing the bright soul in the jasmine and
wisteria thriving in one's own back garden to a burst of
renewed astonishment at the beauty of Venus falling at
dusk, a soul connection over millions of miles.
Astrology the science of seeing the soul of the sky
is
part of a greater vision: that eye that opens each thing
like a poetic treasure, perceiving at work within it the
divine imagination that animates the world.
©1999 Pierz Newton-John -
all rights reserved
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About The
Author
 Pierz
Newton-John is an astrologer and pychotherapist practicing in Melbourne,
Australia. He is "interested in tying together ideas in archetypal
psychology with astrological theory and working on deepening the
philosophical underpinnings of astrological practice". He majored in
the History and Philosophy of Science at Melbourne University and is also
a classical guitarist, poet, and amateur astronomer. Readers can contact him at 80 Herbert Street,
Northcote, Victoria 3070, Australia,
by phone 011 6 13 9482 3018, e-mail pierznj@connexus.net.au.
This article was first printed in the June/July 1999 issue of The
Mountain Astrologer. www.mountainastrologer.com.
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