Uniquely Innovative Uranus

Near the time of the French and American revolutions, on March 13, 1781, William Herschel, an English astronomer, discovered the planet we now call Uranus. At the time Herschel wanted to call the planet Georgium Sidus, after the reigning British monarch, but the French were understandably unenthusiastic about this. So for a while the planet was called Herschel and still is by some. Later, someone logically decided that the planet should be called Uranus, after Ouranos, the father of Saturn. This made rational sense, because there was "genealogical precedent" since in Greek and Roman mythology, Saturn was the father of Jupiter and Jupiter was the father of some of the gods for which the inner planets were named. Ouranos, as the father of Cronos (Saturn) was called by Hesiod, was known as the “starry skies,” and Tarnas (2006) notes that this appellation was poetically appropriate, because Uranus was the farthest planet at that time and so could represent the backdrop of the starry skies. Tarnas relates that all of the other qualities associated with Ouranos do not fit with the qualities associated with the planet Uranus:

The important exception among the qualities and themes attributed to Uranus is the concern with the cosmic and celestial, with space and space travel, and with astronomy and astrology, all of which well fit Ouranos’s nature as the god of the “starry sky.” (p. 94)

Archetypally, Tarnas (1995), in Prometheus the Awakener, concludes that the planet Uranus fits almost perfectly with the mythological figure Prometheus. Tarnas (2006) describes the planet Uranus’s archetypal qualities as:

empirically associated with the principle of change, rebellion, freedom, liberation, reform and revolution, and the unexpected breakup of structures; with sudden surprises, revelations and awakenings, lightning-like flashes of insight, the acceleration of thoughts and events; with births and new beginnings of all kinds, and with intellectual brilliance, cultural innovation, technological invention, experiment, creativity, and originality. In addition to the occurrence of sudden breakthroughs and liberating events, Uranus transits are linked to unpredictable and disruptive changes, hence the planet is often referred to as the “cosmic trickster.” Another set of themes associated with Uranus is a concern with the celestial and the cosmic, with astronomy and astrology, with science and esoteric knowledge, and with space travel and aviation. In terms of personal character, Uranus is regarded as signifying the rebel and the innovator, the awakener, the individualist, the dissident, the eccentric, the restless and wayward. (p. 93)

From this description, the archetypal correspondence between Uranus and the last stage of physical birth, BPM IV, separation from the symbiotic union with the mother and the forming of a new relationship, is clear, and corresponds to the death-rebirth experience.

Tarnas says that while the other outer planets actually are more archetypally correlated with their names, Uranus, perhaps apropos of its trickster nature is the only planet that is very much mis-named. ∆RC[inUr]

Nebulous Nonordinary Neptune

The next planet to be discovered was Neptune, discovered on September 23, 1846. Whereas Uranus’s discovery was surrounded by surprise, Neptune’s was characteristically characterized by confusion, since several men were working at the same time to discover it. J.G. Galle at the Berlin observatory is credited with the discovery, using Leverrier’s calculations of where the planet should be. Adams, was also investigating the possible presence of another planet beyond Uranus at the same time, but Galle “beat him to the punch.” James Challis had discovered the planet over a month before on August 4, but forgot to recheck his calculations (Goldstein, 2004)

With Neptune, the tradition of naming planets after the Greek Gods continued:

Neptune is associated with the transcendent, spiritual, ideal, symbolic, and imaginative dimensions of life; with the subtle, formless, intangible, and invisible; with the unitive, timeless, immaterial, and infinite; with all that which transcends the limited literal temporal and material world of concretely empirical reality—myth and religion, art and inspiration, ideals and aspirations, images and reflections, symbols and metaphors, dreams and visions, mysticism, religious devotion, universal compassion. It is associated with the impulse to surrender separative existence and egoic control, to dissolve boundaries and structures in favor of underlying unities and undifferentiated wholes, merging that which was separate, healing and wholeness; the dissolution of ego boundaries and reality structures, states of psychological fusion and intimations of intrauterine existence, melted ecstasy, mystical union as well as primary narcissism; with tendencies towards illusion and delusion, deception and self-deception, escapism, intoxication, psychosis, perceptual and cognitive distortions, conflation and confusion, projection, fantasy; with the bedazzlement of consciousness whether by gods, archetypes, beliefs, dreams, ideals, or ideologies; with enchantment, in both positive and negative senses.

The archetypal principle linked to Neptune governs all non-ordinary states of consciousness, as well as the stream of consciousness and the oceanic depths of the unconscious. Characteristic metaphors for its domain include the infinite sea of the imagination, the ocean of divine consciousness, and the archetypal wellspring of life. It is, in a sense, the archetype of the archetypal dimension itself, the anima mundi, the Gnostic pleroma, the Platonic realm of transcendent Ideas, the domain of the gods, the Immortals. In mythic and religious terms, it is associated with the all-encompassing womb of the Goddess, and with all deities of mystical union, universal love, and transcendent beauty; the mystical Christ, the all-compassionate Buddha, the Atman-Brahman union, the union of Shiva and Shakti, the hieros gamos or sacred marriage, the coniunctio oppositorum; the dreaming Vishnu, maya and lila, the self-reflecting Narcissus, the divine absorbed in its own reflection; Orpheus, god of artistic inspiration, the Muses; the cosmic Sophia whose spiritual beauty and wisdom pervades all. (Tarnas, 2006, pp. 96-97)

Tarnas (2006) says that Neptune, the tempestuous sea god does not fit the archetypal qualities of planetary archetype Neptune in some ways, but in many ways, this name is poetically correct in describing the planet’s archetypal watery nature:

On the one hand, central to the observed characteristics is an underlying symbolic association with water, the sea, the ocean, streams and rivers, mists and fogs, liquidity and dissolution, the amniotic and prenatal, the permeable and undifferentiated. In this regard, one thinks of the many oceanic and watery metaphors used to describe mystical experience, the all-encompassing ocean of divine consciousness of which our individual selves are but momentarily separate drops, the all-informing ceaselessly flowing Tao whose water-like fluidity evades all definition, the primordial participation mystique of undifferentiated awareness, the mists of prehistory, the amniotic fetal and infantile states of primary fusion, the oceanic realms of the imagination, the fluid nature of psychic life generally: the flow and stream of consciousness, the influx of inspiration, the fog of confusion, drowning in the treacherous deep waters of the unconscious psyche, slipping into madness or addiction, surrendering to the flow of experience, dissolving into the divine union, the cleansing waters of purity and healing, melted ecstasy, and so forth. One thinks here, too, of Freud’s reference to the “oceanic feeling”: “a sensation of ‘eternity,’ a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded—as it were, ‘oceanic’. . . . it is the feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being one with the external world as a whole.” Equally relevant is William James’s image of a transcendental “mother-sea” of consciousness with which the individual consciousness is continuous, and of which the brain essentially serves as a sieve or filtering conduit. (p. 97)

We can clearly see the archetypal link between Neptune archetypally and BPM I: Primal Union with the Mother, the Intrauterine Environment Before the Onset of Delivery (Grof, 1975). ∆RC[inNe]

Potently Primal Pluto

The last planet to be discovered in the 20^th Century was Pluto. Two more planets have been discovered, in the 21^st Century—Sedna on March 15, 2004, and a new and unnamed planet was announced July 29, 2005, although it was discovered in photographs taken on October 21, 2003, the day before I began to vision my dissertation as a website. Interestingly this planet has been informally nicknamed “Lila”: “Claims that 2003 UB313 has been named ‘Xena’ or ‘Lila’ are incorrect; both have been used informally by its discoverers but neither is the name submitted to the IAU.” (Wikipedia, 2005a) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_UB313. The newest planet is about three times as far from the Sun as is Pluto. And “It’s definitely bigger than Pluto,” about 20% bigger. Sedna takes 10,000 years to orbit the sun, and the newest planet’s orbit is 557 years (Britt, 2005b) (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050729_new_planet.html

and (Lemonick, 2005). http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1118354,00.html

These new discoveries have put poor Pluto’s planetary stature into play, and some have argued that Pluto should be stripped of its planetary status. Pluto’s existence was posited by Percival Lowell, who began to search for it in 1905, calling it “Planet X,” but Lowell died before the new planet, now known as Pluto, was discovered. Clyde Tombaugh actually discovered Pluto on Feb. 18, 1930. (Pluto, the Disney dog, is no relation, although both were named Pluto the same year. The Disney dog had appeared previously unnamed and then under a different name). Archetypally apropos, as we will see, planetary Pluto has been described astronomically as a "Secretive World:"

Being far away and small, Pluto is a mere point of light in most telescopes. So it gives up its secrets grudgingly. But high-powered telescopes have in recent years probed some of Pluto's mysteries . . . . Pluto has a very eccentric orbit—its distance from the sun varies by 25%, and from 1979-1999 its orbit took it inside Neptune’s and it also is 17° above and below the ecliptic, and its moon Charon is almost half the size of Pluto. (Britt, 2005a) http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/pluto-ez.htm

Pluto is the smallest planet, with a diameter of 1,430 miles, which makes it about 18 percent the size of Earth. Pluto is smaller than both Mercury (diameter 3031 miles) and the Moon (diameter 2160 miles). But what planetary Pluto lacks in size, archetypal Pluto more than makes up for. Tarnas (2001, online) relates that Pluto is “perhaps the most potent archetypal principle in the planetary pantheon.”

Pluto is much more aptly named than either Uranus or Neptune, and the archetypal parallels between mythological Pluto, the god of the underworld, and planetary archetype Pluto are extensive. Tarnas (2006) explains:

the qualities associated with the new planet in fact bore a striking relevance to the mythic character of Pluto, the Greek Hades, as well as to the figure of Dionysus, with whom Hades-Pluto was closely associated by the Greeks. (Both Heraclitus and Euripides identified Dionysus and Hades as one and the same deity.) Closely analogous to Freud’s concept of the primordial id, “the broiling cauldron of the instincts,” and to Darwin’s understanding of evolving nature and the biological struggle for existence, the archetype associated with the planet Pluto is also linked to Nietzsche’s Dionysian principle and the will to power, as well as to Schopenhauer’s blind striving universal will—all these embodying the powerful forces of nature and emerging from nature’s chthonic depths, within and without, the fiery elemental underworld….the archetype associated with the planet Pluto also encompasses a number of major deities outside the Western context such as the Hindu deity Shiva, god of destruction and creation, as well as Kali and Shakti, goddesses of erotic power and elemental transformation, destruction and regeneration, death and rebirth. (pp. 98-99)

Tarnas (2006) notes that contemporary astrologers have archetypally associated Pluto with

the principle of elemental power, depth, and intensity; with that which compels, empowers, and intensifies whatever it touches, sometimes to overwhelming and catastrophic extremes; with the primordial instincts, libidinal and aggressive, destructive and regenerative, volcanic and cathartic, eliminative, transformative, ever-evolving; with the biological processes of birth, sex, and death, the cycle of death and rebirth; with upheaval, breakdown, decay and fertilization; violent purgatorial discharge of pent-up energies, purifying fire; situations of life-and-death extremes, power struggles, all that is titanic, potent, and massive. Pluto represents the underworld and underground in all senses—elemental, geological, instinctual, political, social, sexual, urban, criminal, mythological, demonic. It is the dark, mysterious, taboo, and often terrifying reality that lurks beneath the surface of things, beneath the ego, societal conventions, and the veneer of civilization, beneath the surface of the Earth, which is periodically unleashed with destructive and transformative force; that which impels, burns, consumes, transfigures, resurrects. In mythic and religious terms, it is associated with the all-powerful deities of destruction and regeneration, death and rebirth, in all cultures; the Greek Dionysus and Hades, as well as Pan and Medusa; the Serpent power, Kundalini, and the Indian deities Shiva, Kali, and Shakti. (p. 99)

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