In my previous post, I offered some thoughts about C.G. Jung’s concept of archetype. As I wrote in that post, we often think of archetypes as a sort of “inner cast of characters,” thereby reducing them to a purely internal psychological phenomenon. In fact, Jung understood archetype to be a form of consciousness which pervades the cosmos as much as it does the human psyche. This conception the universe as archetypally patterned is known as “Archetypal Cosmology.” While grounded in a primordial perspective of the universe, Archetypal Cosmology is also a contemporary re-visioning of age-old human wisdom.
Up until the dawn of the scientific revolution launched during the Enlightenment, the view of the cosmos which infused the Western perspective was one which assumed that consciousness pervaded all things. In this view of the world, rivers, mountains, trees, and the starry heavens were all seen as marvelously alive. From the seventeenth century onward, however, any sense of consciousness was “progressively expunged from the phenomenal world,” as the social historian Morris Berman writes. Under this now-commonly accepted view, consciousness exists only within us, in our minds, and not in the cosmos itself. This perspective, an outgrowth of the mechanistic model of the universe advanced from the time of Newton till that of Einstein, sees the universe itself as unconscious.
Since Einstein’s discovery of relativity at the start of the Twentieth Century, however, a wide range of thinkers from disciplines as diverse as cosmology, environmental science, subatomic physics, depth psychology, and systems theory have evolved a rather different understanding of the universe. This emerging paradigm seeks to restore some sense of the enchantment with which pre-modern humans experienced themselves participating in the unfolding of an epic cosmic story.
Jung was deeply interested in this new vision of the universe and over the course of his life came to deepen his understanding of the role of archetypes as structures of cosmic as well as psychological reality. “Our psyche,” he concluded, “is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche.” Essential to Jung’s evolving understanding of archetype was his recognition that the collective unconscious was not simply a foundational dimension of human awareness, but equally was an elemental aspect of the cosmos itself.
In addition to archetype, another important idea connected with the concept of the collective unconscious is the phenomenon of “synchronicity.” As understood by Jung, synchronicities are acausal meaningful coincidences: highly improbable, highly significant, and seemingly serendipitous happenings. When it is clear that a cause-and-effect connection between two events does not exist, yet a meaningful relationship between them is apparent, we are experiencing synchronicity. Jung viewed synchronicity as the process through which archetypes, arising out of the collective unconscious, manifest as meaning-making bridges between the outer, physical aspect of human experience and it’s inner, psycho-spiritual dimension.
Jung’s interest in both synchronicity and the transpersonal nature of archetypes led him to study the archetypal underpinning of a range of divinatory systems, including the I Ching, Tarot, and, most persistently, astrology. As early as 1911, we see evidence of Jung’s interest in astrology, when he writes “My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology,” adding that he did so “in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth.”
Cosmos and Psyche, by award-winning cultural historian Richard Tarnas, is a key work in the field of archetypal cosmology. In it, Tarnas reviews in detail the shift from an understanding of the universe as profoundly sentient to one in which the universe, while obeying cosmic laws, is itself devoid of consciousness. Seeking evidence for a cosmic dimension of consciousness, Tarnas–like Jung—draws upon an archetypal approach to the ancient wisdom of astrology.
Employing Jung’s concepts of both archetype and synchronicity, Tarnas compares a large number of key events in both world history and the biographies of famous people with the interacting orbits of the astrological planets. Tarnas found that, when interpreted archetypally, planetary interactions do, indeed, powerfully correlate with the archetypal significance and meaning of the events themselves. That said, Tarnas’ correlations, being synchronous in nature, in no way imply the planets physically caused the human events in question. What they do demonstrate, however, is the cosmic nature of the archetypal forces at work as these events unfolded.
As a practitioner of archetypal astrology for many years, I also have routinely found profoundly meaningful connections between astrological events interpreted archetypally and life experience, both my own and that of hundreds of clients. As a result, I, too, have come to validate an archetypal understanding of cosmology, one deeply grounded in the ancient wisdom of the proverb “as above, so below.” Moreover, through embracing this reemerging vision of the universe, I’ve discovered an enhanced understanding of the nature of consciousness itself, one no longer restricted to the individual human mind. Perhaps most significantly, I’ve come to see the unfolding of both human life and the vast cosmos in which we dwell not as an inherently chaotic and meaningless process, but rather as a truly enchanted one full of the profoundest wisdom.
Resources for exploring archetypal cosmology and archetypal astrology:
The Archetypal Cosmos, by Keiron Le Grice
Cosmos and Psyche, by Richard Tarnas
Inside the Cosmic Mind: Archetypal Astrology and the New Cosmology, by Phoebe Weiss
The Night Speaks: A Meditation on the Astrological Worldview, by Steven Forrest