This kind of play erases boundaries, is “essence beyond categories” and is an experience of the unity or oneness that “lies at the heart to the world” (Donaldson, 1993, p. xxiii). As one of Donaldson’s young playmates described it: “Play is when we don’t know that we are different from each other” (p. xxii). Donaldson plays with wild animals, special needs children, gang members, and prisoners. Through this very special kind of play, he is able to share these experiences of oneness with his playmates. Such experiences are rare and precious in today’s competition culture, and such play is profoundly transformative.

Now that we are through playing around, we will turn to the idea of kaleidoscopes, which are also mandala symbols, and learn something about them. After that, I will share my thoughts regarding using the lens of astrology to peer into the "Kaleidoscope of Culture."

Kaleidoscopes

The kaleidoscope was invented in 1816, by Sir. David Brewster and patented the following year. Brewster had been studying the effects of the polarization of light and won “his era’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Physics for the research which had the kaleidoscope’s invention as a side-effect.” (deMarrias, 2003, p. 8, unpublished manuscript). The kaleidoscope was one of the first fads, selling over 200,000 during its first three months. deMarrais tells us that many different authors, including Jung, have contemplated the symbolic significance of the kaleidoscope. Cozy Baker (1993, online), who has written several books on kaleidoscopes, says that the kaleidoscope brings together

in one object cell a unity of light, color, form, and motion, that seems to capture moments of eternity, the kaleidoscope “inspires the mind” and “calls the heart.” It is form of art that is continuously being created right before the viewer’s eyes. The static has been removed and the imagery lives, equating itself to life’s experience. http://www.brewstersociety.com/kaleidowritings.html#synthesis

Walt Disney loved kaleidoscopes, having been given one by his secretary Hazel George (Thomas, 1976). Disney's Wonderful World of Color television seriesused kaleidoscope images in its introduction. Dean Kent, a kaleidoscope artist, in an article entitled “The Kaleidoscope: A Synthesis of Science and Art” notes that

one of the delights of life is the discovery of patterns of order and beauty in nature. We inhabit a world of dynamic process and structure. There is a constant process of shaping and reshaping, an imcomparable metamorphic drama. Through the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, nature creates in rhythms, cycles and frequencies. (Kent, 1987, online)

Kent (1987, online) discusses the healing potential of kaleidoscopes, and associates them with mandalas:

Throughout history, human beings have strived to create images of wholeness, giving a unified tangible form to the diversity of life’s experiences. In the East, these patterns are called mandalas and are considered as aids to meditation and worship. The kaleidoscope is an instrument that freely generates infinite numbers of mandalic images and concentrates the mind upon these images in such a way that the eye passes into a new perceptual frontier . . . . In this new frontier the mind encounters images of integration and wholeness. These images express the idea of a safe refuge, of inner reconciliation and wholeness.

In discussing Stonehenge as a mandala in their book Mandala, Arguèlles and Arguèlles (1995) relate:

The mandala is the symbol of the round of life and death, of the cosmic procession of beings, planets and stars, of earthly seasons and galactic cycles . . . . It is not concerned with the personal but with the transpersonal; not with the fugitive and the arbitrary but with the eternal. (p. 34)

We are reminded of Jungs’s (1958/1970) notion that mandala symbols, are associated with the Self, and are modern symbols of order, that seek to unite opposites. (p. 326, para. 619) They often show up in times of turbulence to balance out the psyche.

The 1960s, as we may remember and as we will see in the "Mary Poppins" chapter, was such a turbulent, chaotic decade. Thus, it is not surprising that we would see a resurgence of kaleidoscopes at this time. Grof (2005, personal communication, 1/31/2005) notes that kaleidoscopic imagery was often experienced as a part of LSD sessions, which Grof felt alluded to the fractal nature of reality. The Beatles, giving musical expression to this occurrence penned Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Lennon & McCartney, 1967b, CD)—“the girl with kaleidoscope eyes.” In the 1960s Disney's Wonderful World of Color also used kaleidoscopic imagery in the show's introduction.

DeMarrais (2003, unpublished manuscript) notes that both Lévi-Strauss (1964-1971) and Joseph Campbell (1959-1968) in their four-volume treatises on mythology, used kaleidoscopic imagery in the 1960s in talking about myth. Lévi-Strauss, in talking about mythology as being the “science of the concrete” introduced the concept of bricolage in his book La Pensée Savage (The Savage Mind) in 1962. The penultimate example of bricolage for Levi-Strauss was the kaleidoscope, because the bits and pieces that make up kaleidoscopes were formerly part of “other coherent sets.” Lévi-Strauss (1962/1966) likens the images of myths which then get combined and recombined in various ways to the work of a bricoleur and to the workings of a kaleidoscope. The logic employed in mythical thinking:

works rather like a kaleidoscope, an instrument which also contains bits and pieces by means of which structural patterns are realized. The fragments are products of a process of breaking up and destroying, in itself a contingent matter . . . . They can no longer be considered entities in their own right in relation to the manufactured objects of whose ‘discourse’ they have become the indefinable debris, but they must be so considered from a different point of view if they are to participate usefully in the formation of a new type of entity: one consisting of patterns in which, through the play of mirrors, reflections are equivalent of real objects, that is, in which signs assume the status of things signified. These patterns actualize possibilities whose number, though it may be very great, is not unlimited, for it is a function of the possible lay-out and balances which may be effected between bodies whose number itself is finite. Finally and most important, these patterns produced by the conjunction of contingent events (the turning of the instrument by the person looking through it) and a law (namely that governing the construction of the kaleidoscope . . . ) project models of intelligibility which are in a way provisional, since each pattern can be expressed in terms of strict relations between its parts and since these relations have no content apart from the pattern itself, to which no object in the observer’s experience corresponds—even though, by such a manoeuvre, particular objective structures, such as those of snow crystals or certain types or radiolaria and diatomaccae might be revealed while their empirical basis were yet unknown to the obserger who had not yet seen them. (pp. 36-37)

Joseph Campbell (1987b) in Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, uses kaleidoscope metaphors several times (pp. 61 and 367), and in the opening sentence he writes:

The comparative study of the mythologies of the world compels us to view the cultural history of mankind as a unit; for we find that such themes as the fire-theft, deluge, land of the dead, virgin birth, and resurrected hero have a worldwide distribution – appearing everywhere in new combinations while remaining, like the elements of a kaleidoscope, only a few and always the same. (p. 3)

deMarrais mentions that Jung’s (1912/2001) Transformations and Symbols of Libido, later reissued as Symbols of Transformation (1912/1976), includes several kaleidoscope references:

allusions to the kaleidoscope to describe the workings of the psyche appear half a dozen times in it. Such references disappear in later writings, to be replaced by the structurally near-identical imagery of mandala symbols – circularly symmetric patterns serving as guides or expressions of the “individuation process” that became Jung’s central concern. (de Marrais, 2003, unpublished manuscript, p. 9)

We, too, will be using the "Kaleidoscope of Culture" to access a new frontier, a new way of seeing, that can perhaps lead to more wholeness. As we experience the different turns of the "Kaleidoscope of Culture" we will see how play allows us to combine things in different ways to make new things and also to see things differently. Guggenbühl-Craig (1995), as mentioned in the methodology chapter, likens therapy to the turning of a kaleidoscope:

The paradoxical approach to psychology offers still more. It helps us to play in the most profound sense of the word. Aside from many other things, psychology is also play. . . . Psychology is play for the glory of the soul. We psychologists try playfully to comprehend the soul with images and fables. The paradox of the images reminds us continually that we are playing as if with a kaleidoscope. We shake or turn the images lightly, revealing ever new configurations. (p. 130)

In the "Kaleidoscope of Culture," we, too, will be turning the kaleidoscope and watching ever new configurations appear.

Kent (1987) sees the kaleidoscope as a metaphor for a new perspective on the world, which seeks to amplify the interconnected nature of all life:

Too often people focus on the differences and problems that exist between us rather than recognize that the resolution of conflict exists in an acknowledgement of the universality of human experience. We believe that the kaleidoscope can be best understood as metaphor for a new world perspective. It is as if you took the dizzying multiplicity of people, places, and things in the world and placed them in an object case. Where there was division difference and apparent chaos, there emerges integration, similarity and an organic unfolding.

The metaphor offers a realization of a connecting, purposeful sprit that envelopes the whole earth, connecting all organisms in an endless chain of life. The simple pleasure of viewing a kaleidoscope reminds us of the interdependence and interrelatedness of life on earth. The earth as seen from space is a living mandala, an organic whole, and as an image forms a foundation for a widening of the human perceptual horizon and a broadening of thought and understanding.

http://www.brewstersociety.com/kaleidowritings.html#synthesis

Through the "Kaleidoscope of Culture," we will be able to see these interconnected patterns and the role that cosmic play has in the circle of things. We will be looking through the lens of astrology to see how the Cosmic Game plays out in the different cultural pieces and in culture itself. We will shortly see that astrology charts are kaleidoscopic. They rearrange the same elements in different ways, and the different patterns that they portray are meaningful. Astrology is a synchronistic art. So let me just take a few moments to say a few things about astrology, and how it came to be a lens for me.

Why Astrology?

While contemplating Jung’s elusive Bollingen stone, I noticed that placed among the letters of the different quotes Jung used, there were strange symbols, or glyphs, which correspond to the different planets known to the ancients. “My god, its full of stars” I thought, to quote Dr. Floyd from 2010: The Year We Make Contact (Hyams, 1984). Originally, I was reflecting on the Bollingen stone quite often, and noticed that in fashioning it, Jung had taken a bit of something from here and a bit of something from there. As mentioned in the methodology chapter, the Bollingen stone is a brilliant piece of bricolage, since the stone contains many different elements. For example, on the Telesphoros side there are three quotes (all from different sources), a small figure of the Telesphoros, the different astrological signs or glyphs as they are called, along with some zigzag and wavy lines, which Jung (Wagner, 2001) remarks symbolize the alchemical formula known as the Axiom of Maria.

It was then that I realized also that the astrological symbols, situated within the different circles, reminded me of a horoscope, and that horoscopes are bricolage; they take the same elements and use them over and over in different configurations. Also horoscopes are reminiscent of kaleidoscopes, which Lévi-Strauss used as an example of bricolage in showing how mythical thinking was bricolage. Turner (1988) notes that play is the supreme bricoleur and Klages (2001, online) notes that bricoleurs are interested in the use value not the truth value of ideas.

This is how I think of astrology, in terms of use value. Is it true, who knows? The more important question is rather: Is it useful to me? Yes. Can I gain something from looking through this lens? I think so. Others have also reported that looking through the lens of astrology they are able to take things less personally and the world seems to make more sense to them. This has also been my experience Seeing the synchronicities in the world and in the cultural pieces was an important part of my methodology, and so I set out to gather these facts, long before I considered these time periods astrologically. I was not setting out to prove that astrology was true, but I just wanted to see if these cultural times reflected the archetypal aspects of the cosmic game. When I started considering the times astrologically afterwards, I noticed the interplay between the descriptions astrology provides and what I actually was seeing, so this gave me another lens through which to view at the material I was already exploring.

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