Richard Tarnas – Cosmos and Psyche

I had heard a great deal of hype about this book, either about how excellent it was, or about how much it fails to add anything at all ‘scientific’ or what he has done as a respected Academic Voice to support the noble cause of astrology.

He does not write quite so much as an ‘insider’ as far as astrology goes, which is something I always find refreshing, though some of his conventions are less usual – for example, the 20-degree orb he gives to major planetary transits. No doubt, this is what makes some critics point out that in this way, you could make any mundane event fit the ‘evidence’ in a wise-after-the-event way. Anything could then be bent to fit the rules.

Actually, his analysis of outer-planet transits was a real eye-opener and makes more sense of them than any astrological book I have read to date. All of a sudden, it becomes a question of wondering why it had been possible to miss certain things before – perhaps because many of the books that first introduced me to astrology were content to name the outer planets as being merely ‘generational’ and therefore not deserving of any real consideration in looking at individual character. Yet surely, it is a mistake not to recognise how much we are a product of out times: this book puts every individual he looks at, ranging from every manner of political and spiritual leader, to writers who seem to capture the times they live in such as Orwell or Kafka, to contemporary rock stars: this book is nothing if not wide-ranging in its scope!

I believe that Liz Greene has published something on astro.com about how the ‘generational’ planets stamp character according to the times in which they are born.

By way of applying some of this to personal experience of having lived through periods of time and noticing first hand how the mood of the times can change: having graduated at a time when Pluto and Saturn were in aspect during the Thatcher years, I (along, no doubt with many others) was certainly in a position to see how public opinion and feeling polarised at that point in time, as the good Iron Lady made sure the ‘more chilly but infinitely more invigorating’ climate she had promised became a reality and then as she went warmongering in Argentina. It was just that at the time, it was less easy to pinpoint this chillier and more invigorating eighties zeitgeist to that particular configuration, as all ‘generational’ influences has been assigned to a fairly cobwebby back shelf of relative neglect.

It is perhaps his wide orb for major conjunctions such as the Uranus-Neptune conjunction as the explosion in Net culture followed in its wake along with the Hubble telescope are perhaps only things that are better understood within a longer perspective.

He does, incidentally as the book reaches its conclusion, predict as well as pinpoint certain configurations to Interesting Times – assigning, for example, Saturn-Pluto-Uranus aspect pattern with those that were active at the time of the Great Depression, a Grand Cross configuration involving Saturn and Pluto in the days leading up to the September 11 terrorist attacks – reminding us too, that a similar configuration will take place in the next few years to come. So now, it is just a question of waiting to see how the configurations he examines to play out and how accurate his predictions prove to be. He does not, incidentally, play the doom-monger here, reminding readers that much depends on our own good selves and on the governments we allow in.

One of the reasons why the wise-after-the event criticisms seem a little unfair is because in so many of the autobiographies he looks at, he examines not only the natal configuration of a given individual, but also at what happens during important transits this planet makes to itself during that individual’s life. He therefore looks at what happens in the life of Descartes amongst others for example when his sensitively-placed natal Uranus makes its 180-degree aspect to itself – in other words, the opposition – in relation to what happens in his life and what kind of live events helped shaped the philosophy he evolved. Once again, the absence of clichéd comments about midlife crises is refreshing, as is the more impersonal lack of use of Signs to comment on charts: not so much chest-bashing stereotyping there.

As for a possible, overall rationale of Why Astrology Might Work here, he falls back on the idea of Jung and synchronicity, whilst applying a little more the the rigour of his philosophical expertise to the matter. He suggests that synchronous events somehow possess an objectivity, as much as having subjective impact for the person undergoing these significant synchronous events, suggesting that outer Cosmos and inner Psyche cannot therefore be separated. So, physicists who take heart on the idea that a particle is a wave depending on how it is perceived should take part here, if they object to an overly-reductionist empiricism being applied to astrology. Here too, he seems to be referring to the theory expressed by Plato, that the truest of Ideas are actually objective, rather than subjective.

Finally, Tarnas the Philosopher does have a message, regarding the general state of alienation from nature and from our Souls, suggesting that Astrology can heal this split, allowing humanity to partake once more in a Sentient Cosmos of Meaning. He does tend to champion the Nietschean quest of the Solar Hero over the ground of the more nature-bound Earth/Lunar Mothers, in keeping with most astrologers, though he does emphasise that this may also be responsible for many modern social ills.

Overall, for me at least this was truly an absorbing and exciting book, no least because it was so wide-ranging in scope. Reading about the biographies of all the people mentioned here within the context of their times was fascinating, no matter whatever nit-picking flaws could be found with the book otherwise.