Introduction to K of C Astrological Aspects 5

Especially characteristic of the Uranus-Neptune archetypal complex was Shakespeare’s intuition of life as a kind of divine play or artistic pageant, much like the Indian view of maya and lila, and his disclosure of this reality as a dramatic epiphany within his own plays. Appearing in subtle and implicit ways throughout his works, this theme was made most explicit in The Tempest, containing his own self-portrait as a magus, near the end of Shakespeare’s own creative trajectory just as the Uranus-Neptune alignment in the sky became exact. Here we see the Shakespearean revelation of a mysterious spiritual-imaginative ground (or, in a sense, groundlessness) underlying all reality, dissolving and melting into thin air the literal appearance of all things to reveal the divine dream of life, the spiritual theatre of the human condition:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a track behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. (Tarnas, 2006, pp. 385-386)

In a similar vein at the turn of the century, William James (1985) in The Varieties of Religious Experience researched and analyzed religious and spiritual experiences describes these different states as including “ the sudden influx of a dream-like sense of mystery and timelessness, indescribable awe, a dissolution of the usual sense of self or personal identity, and an often disorienting recognition that ordinary consciousness discloses only a phantasmal unreality” (Tarnas, 2006, pp. 404-405). Another typical Uranus-Neptune theme that occurs during these different mystical awakening experiences, is “the experience of sudden reconciliation, the unexpected resolution of what had seemed to be irrevocably opposite principles or forces into a larger complex unity: the mysterium coniunctionis” (Tarnas, 2006, p. 408). Tarnas further explicates:

“Looking back on my own experiences,” James concluded, they all converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance. The keynote of it is invariably a reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity. Not only do they, as contrasted species, belong to one and the same genus, but one of the species, the nobler and better one, is itself the genus, and so soaks up and absorbs its opposite into itself. This is a dark saying, I know, when thus expressed in terms of common logic, but I cannot wholly escape from its authority. I feel as if it must mean something. . . . Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. [Tarnas quoting James—p. 388 ] (p. 408)

James had been discussing the fact that mystical feelings that can also be induced through ether and nitrous oxide, as his own illuminating experience had been. James (1985) says of that experience:

One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are all there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question,—for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. (p. 388)

Tarnas (2006) refers to this as James’s “paradigmatic statement concerning the mystery of nonordinary states of consciousness” (p. 408). In James’s case this revelation (Uranus) about these mystical states of consciousness (Neptune) was brought about through technology (Uranus), which in this case was a drug (Neptune). The Uranus-Neptune energies can afford access to different worlds of experience, that are parallel to ordinary consciousness.

Whereas, in Freud’s work, there a “liberation of the instinctual, the awakening to the Dionysian and the Id” characteristically occurring during the Uranus-Pluto conjunction, in James's work, as in Jung’s, there is “a liberation of the idea of the sacred into modern discourse, an awakening to a previously hidden or suppressed reality,” which is characteristic of the Uranus-Neptune archetypal complex (p. 402). Tarnas (2006) sums up the difference between Freud’s and Jung’s psychologies in terms of the Uranus-Pluto and Uranus-Neptune alignments:

Remarkably, it was during the period in which Uranus and Pluto were most closely in alignment (1896-1907) that Freud’s more instinctually and biologically oriented psychology received its most significant impetus, appropriate to the Dionysian-Plutonic archetypal complex (again, eloquently embodied in Freud’s telling epigraph from Virgil for The Interpretation of Dreams, “If I cannot move the Gods above, then I will move the Infernal regions”). By contrast, Jung’s more transpersonal, mythic, symbolical, and spiritually oriented psychology, including his early studies in astrology and esoteric traditions, as well as his seminal insights into the coniunctio oppositorum (conjunction of opposites) and the transcendent function, received its most significant impetus when Uranus was in close alignment exclusively with Neptune (1908-1918). (p. 362)

During the Uranus-Neptune conjunction, Jung became interested in astrology and in 1911, Jung informed Freud of his interest. On May 8^th he wrote:

Occultism is another field we shall have to conquer—with the aid of the libido theory it seems to me. At the moment I am looking into astrology, which seems indispensable for a proper understanding of mythology. There are strange and wondrous things in these lands of darkness. Please don't worry about my wanderings in these infinitudes. I shall return laden with rich booty for our knowledge of the human psyche. For a while longer I must intoxicate myself on magic perfumes in order to fathom the secrets that lie hidden in the abysses of the unconscious. (Freud & Jung, 1974, p. 421)

Shortly afterwards on June 12, Jung again mentioned his interest in astrology in a letter to Freud:

My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology. I made horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth. Some remarkable things have turned up which will certainly appear incredible to you…. I dare say that we shall one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge that has been intuitively projected into the heavens. For instance, it appears that the signs of the zodiac are character pictures, in other words libido symbols which depict the typical qualities of the libido at a given moment. (Freud & Jung, 1974, p. 427)

Here, we have Jung’s interest in astrology (Uranus) helping him to uncover information about the unconscious workings of the psyche (Neptune). Less than two weeks later, on June 23, 1911, Jung wrote to Freud about the relevancy of unconscious fantasies (Neptune), and the potential for them to illuminate (Uranus) the psyche. Jung also quoted Goethe’s Faust on the playful nature of the psyche:

the unconscious fantasies contain a whole lot of relevant material, and bring the inside to the outside as nothing else can, so that I see a faint hope of getting at even the “inaccessible” cases by this means. These days my interest turns more and more to ucs. fantasy, and it is quite possible that I’m attaching too great hopes to these excavations. Ucs. fantasy is an amazing witches cauldron:

formation, transformation,
Eternal Mind’s eternal recreation.
Thronged round with images of things to be,
They see you not, shadows are all they see.”
This is the matrix of the mind, as the little great-grandfather correctly saw.
I hope something good comes out of it. (Freud & Jung, 1974, p. 431)

In 1912, Jung published Symbols of Transformation, a book that examined the fantasies of a Miss Miller, were recommended to Jung by Flournoy. This was the book that caused Freud and Jung to part company, since by this time, Jung had substantial differences with Freud regarding the nature of libido. Freud was firmly entrenched in the sexual nature of libido, while Jung’s views had broadened. In 1916 Jung published “The Transcendent Function” for the first time, and it is of note that both Symbols of Transformation and “The Transcendent Function” were later revised and republished by Jung during the Uranus-Neptune square of the 1950s. And, speaking of the 1950s, we will explore the Uranus-Neptune archetypal complex further in the Disneyland chapter. [link to Disneylnd chart] The last alignment we will consider, Saturn-Pluto, has profoundly different qualities than either the Uranus-Pluto or the Uranus-Neptune alignments.

Saturn-Pluto—Traumatically Transformative

The alignments between Saturn and Pluto occur with much greater frequency than the other alignments we have been exploring. These alignments occur much more often and are of shorter duration, since conjunctions between the two planets occur between 31 and 37 years, while the alignments between Saturn and Pluto last on average between three and four years. These alignments also have a much different feeling to them, which is evident by looking at the times when they occurred.

At the turn of the century, in 1898-1899 there was an opposition between Saturn and Pluto, and in 1913-1916 the two planets were conjunct, which corresponds to the first World War. The next opposition occurred in 1929-1933, [link to Chicago portrayal chart] coinciding with the onset of the Great Depression, while the following conjunction in 1946-1948 corresponded to the beginning of the Cold War. During the following opposition in the mid 1960s, the United States was embroiled in Vietnam, and fast forwarding to the Twenty-first century the Saturn-Pluto opposition of 2001-2003 saw the twin tragedies of 9/11 and the Iraq war. Just by looking at these dates, we can get a good idea of what the Saturn-Pluto archetypal complex is like. Tarnas (2001, online) writes:

In the case of major aspects between two planets one of which is Saturn, the corresponding phenomena suggest that the Saturn archetype tends to combine itself with the second principle involved in such a way as to express its characteristic qualities and themes of contraction, realism, division, deprivation, materiality, hardship, judgment, strict authority, and so forth, but in this case through and by means of the archetypal principle associated with Pluto. In the case of the hard aspects in particular, the Saturn principle tends to bring out the problematic potential of whatever it touches, while in other respects opposing or negating that second planetary principle. Its archetypal influence seems also to be one of moving events towards critical and defining junctures.

. . . so too during Saturn-Pluto alignments, the Plutonic principle seemed to empower and intensify each of the above-mentioned Saturnian tendencies and qualities to an often overwhelming degree and on a massive scale. Besides this intensifying and empowering influence, the Pluto archetype also appeared to add into the larger complex its own distinctive qualities involving instinctual and elemental forces, titanic power and violent intensity, violation and destruction, chthonic and underworld depths, and evolutionary transformation.

Continued on page 6