Mary Poppins Astrological Aspects 2

Archetypal Aspects at Play in the Movie

In the movie Mary Poppins, these different planetary archetypal complexes play out in the following ways. Together Mary and Bert represent the Uranus-Pluto conjunction while George represents Saturn. Mary is thoroughly Uranian and in trickster fashion upsets George’s established order. She introduces self-organizing chaos into the Banks's home through the imaginal adventures on which she takes the children. The children have been rebelling against the established order through playing tricks themselves and now have a new nanny. Mary uses originality, surprise, disruption, reframing, change, and flying as part of her bag of tricks. Mary is also rather aloof, another Uranian quality, and is a fierce individual. Bert represents the more chthonic Plutonic part of the pair, being a chimneysweep bricoleur and all. Bert brings his sweep friends into the Banks's home where they chaotically self-organize in song and dance. Always ready with a reframe, Bert is a liminal figure, most often attired in black and he introduces the children to many different liminal worlds, such as the pavement pictures and the rooftops of London. Bert is comfortable in darkness, and his healing is clandestine, and chaotic. As previously mentioned, we can see some of Mary’s magic reflecting the Neptune in Scorpio dynamic, which is discussed further in the upcoming “Tricks of the Trade” excursion, in the ongoing themes section. Winifred, as a suffragette also has a strong Uranian quality.

Although specifically speaking about the Saturn-Uranus planetary archetypal complex, but applicable to others as well, Tarnas (1995) notes that this planetary archetypal complex can express itself in many ways, both internally and externally, physically or psychologically:

Archetypes cut across all experiential boundaries; they know no arbitrary limit such as those defined by the Cartesian-Newtonian universe. If one is unconscious of an archetypal complex, it can emerge unannounced from within, as in disturbing psychological symptoms that upset the ego’s sense of control and equilibrium. But equally likely is the tendency to project the complex’s energy outward and thus attract events or persons that fulfill the archetype’s character in the case of a denial of Prometheus, for example, accidents of various kinds, rebellious children who do not turn out the way one wants, spouses seeking greater independence, divorces, firings, upsets of all sorts. In general, one feels constantly prey to unpredictable events which serve to make life unstable, chaotic, and continually challenging in uncomfortable ways. [emphasis added] (pp. 108-109)

This is exactly what happens to George Banks. His rebellious children are constantly "running off" their nannies and his wife is a suffragette. George is so polarized on the Saturn end of the spectrum that he projects out the Promethean part, which he then encounters in world around himself. In doing this, he attracts the ultimate awakener, Mary Poppins, into in his life. Until George integrates this Promethean principle he will be at the mercy of this tricksterish Uranian energy. In the end, George does integrate these archetypal energies; he learns all of the Promethean lessons that Mary has been teaching the children, which we see when George has an epiphany at the bank after he has been fired. When the Promethean impulse is consciously integrated, it can “engender what is often experienced as a revolution in consciousness, a sense of extraordinary existential liberation, mental and intuitive brilliance, enlightenment: Prometheus Unbound. Prometheus is the channel for the creative impulse within in every psyche” (Tarnas, 1995, p. 113). Mary Poppins represents this revolutionary consciousness, this Prometheus Unbound energy.

The Saturn versus Uranus-Pluto theme was also at play in other contemporaneous cultural pieces in the 1960s, where a Uranian trickster character comes to awaken a Saturnian situation and liberate others, causing chaos in the process. The Sound of Music (Wise, 1965) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Hughes, 1968) are examples from the big screen, and Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie on the small screen, have an archetypally similar flavor.

In Mary Poppins, we see how little events can mushroom into chaos, when Michael wants to feed the birds with his tuppence, and his father refuses. This fateful decision eventually brings about a bank run and almost costs George Banks his job. During the 1960s chaos theory began when a similar small event blew up into large changes. Meteorologist Edward Lorenz was using a computer program to predict atmospheric changes in the weather. He was rerunning some of the data from the program, and as the computer was processing, he took a coffee break. When he came back, the changes in the results were so large that Lorenz thought that the machine must have blown a vacuum tube. In actuality, what had occurred was a small rounding error. The initial run had been calculated out to six decimal places but only reported back to three decimal places. So, when Lorenz input the shorter numbers into the program it led to very different results. The small rounding error caused a very significant change in the data, leading to chaos theory and the idea of SDIC, or sensitive dependence on initial conditions, otherwise known as the "butterfly effect." [This was also discussed in the "Cosmic Game" chapter in the "Crash Course on Chaos" section.]. During the 1960s, similar occurrences happened in Watts and Detroit. The riots in both of these cities initially began over small traffic violations, a real world example of the volatile nature of chaos.

So now, let us turn briefly to the 1960s and see a few examples of these planetary archetypal complexes at play during that chaotic time.

Cultural Correspondences in the 1960s

The 1960s was a truly archetypal time. Tarnas (2006) in speaking of this revolutionary time period notes:

By all accounts the Sixties were an extraordinary era. Intense, problematic, and seminal, the entire decade seems to have been animated by a peculiarly vivid and compelling spirit—something “in the air”—an elemental force that was apparent to all at the time, that was not present in such a tangible manner during the immediately preceding or subsequent decades, and that in retrospect still sets the era apart as a phenomenon unique in recent memory. (p. 142)

The word “revolution” itself, so often heard in the 1960s and so emblematic of its spirit, first came into wide use in the 1790s in its present meaning of sudden radical change of an overwhelming nature, bringing into being a fundamentally new condition. Innumerable allusions, explicit or otherwise, were made in the press and the popular culture of the Sixties that directly connected the spirit and violent revolutionary impulses of that era with the French Revolution. (pp. 144-145)

Tarnas is not the only one to describe the decade in this fashion. In reading about the 1960s, the archetypally appropriate language that is used by various commentators to describe the decade is striking. For example, Rielly (2003) in The 1960s writes:

The decade of the 1960s was a time of great change in American culture. The winds of change, sometimes more like a tornado, swept across the cultural landscape, uprooting the old and depositing the new. These changes were exciting, troubling, horrifying, energizing, depending on one’s individual attitudes toward past traditions and beliefs. Every historical period brings some transformations, but the 1960s seemed to replace an old world with a new one. Even those Americans who wanted to remain faithful to past practices could not totally resist what was happening around them. [emphasis added] (p. ix)

Tornadic winds of change is an apt metaphor for this planetary archetypal complex. Later, while discussing fashion, Rielly (2003) refers to “the anti-establishment earthquake” when he talked about how fashions also reflected reactions against the establishment (p. 84), and Maltby (1989) calls the period of the 1960s the “Revolution of Youth.” In This Fabulous Century 1960-1970, (Bowen, 1970b) we can see the Promethean awakening of the Dionysian in the chapter titles: “Cities and Spirits Inflamed and “Angry Voices Speak Out.” Jennings and Brewster (1998), too, called the 1960s the “crisis years” and recount:

nothing can challenge the status of the Second World War as the century’s most dynamic event, but while it is harder to measure its impact, the Sixties were nearly as transforming, if only for the sheer quantity of conventions overturned, battles joined and ideas put forth . . . . Sixties contain both liberal apotheosis and conservative backlash (p. 368)

To be alive in the Sixties was to feel exhilarated, present not necessarily happy, but at least fiercely awake. To be young in the sixties was to be all this and more. Along with “consciousness raising” and pleasure (particularly sexual pleasure . . . ) the Sixties glorified youth and freedom; the years also maligned old age, tradition, discipline and the conformity that had been the hallmark of the most recent decade. (p. 370)

In describing the “challenges to America’s self-satisfaction” Jennings and Brewster (1998) cite the moral confrontation over civil rights and “the competitive life and death struggle symbolized by the space race” (p. 358). Lastly, Jennings and Brewster in discussing the Apollo XI mission note the contrast betwween the chaotic, yet Promethean lived experience of the situation here on earth, and the view of Earth from space:

Yet in an odd way Apollo XI belonged not only to America as it once was, but to America as it had become, to this era to and its abundant sense of free spirit . . . . Perhaps most importantly in the views of their lunar cameras captured when they were directed back to Earth. At home, no matter where you stood, the Sixties looked messy and unreadable… yet from out there, in the dark eternity of the universe, the planet projected a picture of harmony, an essentially beautiful orb, ordered and still. (pp. 418-419)

Having seen how various commentators have discussed the decade, we will take a quick archetypal preview tour of the 1960s and see these archetypes at play in culture. These two Uranus-Pluto vectors, awakening of the Dionysian energies (Uranus—> Pluto) and the radical empowerment of technology (Pluto—> Uranus) were clearly visible, with a little Saturn thrown in every once in while for good measure.

Beginning on the more playful side, the James Bond movies combined Plutonic sex and violence with the Uranian technology of Q’s beloved gadgets. Disneyland was also “archetypally correct” during the 1960s, showcasing the empowerment of technology by unveiling a new and improved Tomorrowland, as well as the new technology of audioanimatronics. Audioanimatronics made its debut in the more liminal (Plutonic) side of the park in Adventureland in 1963. Along the same liminal lines, New Orleans Square also opened in the mid-1960s. In typical Uranian fashion, the two liminal rides of New Orleans Square, “The Haunted Mansion” and “The Pirates of the Caribbean” [Explore liminality further in the "Antistructure Excursion" in Disneyland’s Extra Extra Chapter] breached the confines of the berm, and with true trickster subversion, went under the berm and a portion of each ride being located outside of the park’s formal boundary. In 1964, Disney also unveiled four exhibits at the World’s Fair, which featured the archetypally appropriate “twin themes 'Man's Achievements in an Expanding Universe' and 'A Millennium of Progress' celebrated the boundless potential of science and technology for human betterment” (UCLA, 2005) (http://naid.sppsr.ucla.edu/ny64fair/map-docs/technology.htm). One of Disneyland’s ancestors was the Great Exhibition or Crystal Palace of 1851, which occurred during another Uranus-Pluto conjunction from 1845-1856. Disney thus returned the World’s Fair favor and all of the exhibits that Disney provided also focused on archetypally correct themes: for General Electric—Progressland; for Ford—"Magic Skyway" showcasing the primeval power of dinosaurs; for Pepsi—“It’s a Small World”; and for the Illinois Pavillion—Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln (the Great Emancipator).

Other expressions of the empowerment and intensification of technology and liberatory impulses [Pluto—>Uranus] were the titanic promethean power of the space program, advances in many different fields of science from the microcosm and DNA to the macrocosm and the Big Bang, and in-between with seafloor spreading and plate tectonics, along with the aforementioned birth of chaos theory. Tarnas (2006) adds that:

in the philosophy of science, the very concept of “scientific revolution” was given a radically new formulation and influential analysis during this period with Thomas Kuhn's 1962 masterwork The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which in itself commenced a paradigm-shifting revolution in Twentieth Century thought. (p. 164)

Speaking of revolutions, a revolutionary spirit swept across the country as revolutions occurred in women’s rights, civil rights, the sexual revolution, and gay liberation movement, many of which were turn of the Twentieth Century themes, too, along with the environmental movement, touched off by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962.

Laurence Hillman (1999) notes that the civil rights movement is an example of Uranian energy, because it is “colorblind and cares about the person inside the shell, indifferent to color, creed, origin, race, religion, or sexual orientation.” Tarnas (2006) maintains that Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington was “perhaps the paradigmatic statement of this powerful collective impulse during the 1960s … where King gave prophetic voice to the long evolutionary struggle (Pluto) for liberation, awakening, and freedom (Uranus)" (p. 153)

Continued on page 3