Astrology &
The Soul of the World
by Pierz
Newton-John
"... I saw the forms of serene ancestors, men and
women for whom the stars were both words and gods, for
whom the world and the sky and the earth were a vast
language of dreams and omens. "
?Ben Okri,
The Famished Road1
 Astrologers
often get caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one
hand, there is a part in all of us that longs for the
sanction of our society, for the status of confirmed
truth, even if we may sometimes enjoy imagining
ourselves as someone who "saw further" than
the rest. A lot of time and words have been expended on
apologias to science, attempting to justify astrology on
the basis of everything from "undiscovered
forces" to quantum theory, yet always falling far
short of anything resembling a scientific theory. On the
other hand, we buck against the whole philosophical
basis of science and decry scientists as blinkered
bigots.
It's a thorny problem: how can we justify
astrology, which ascribes psychic qualities to
non-living matter, when our whole scientific paradigm
denies the existence of qualities, per se, and believes
only in the reality of the quantifiable attributes of
the world?
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Yet
perhaps if we listen to what astrology teaches us about
the world, instead of seeking to find an explanation
that will allow it to fit into existing categories of
understanding, astrology could open the door to a
different way of knowing the world, in which qualities
are considered a primary and irreducible reality.
Astrology demonstrates that qualitative energies are not
mere projections; they are inherent to the world. They
constitute its soul.
This
statement is, of course, an unforgivable heresy from a
scientific standpoint. According to science, the only
thing that is real in the world is its material
structure. The qualities of things are regarded as
purely subjective constructs, insignificant by-products
of the brain's processing.
The
World Soul
Once we
make the leap of allowing the world to possess intrinsic
qualities, we must admit the presence of something akin
to an imagination in the world itself, an anima mundi,
or world soul. Our current materialist paradigm sharply
divides "imagination" from "world",
seeing the former as belonging entirely within the brain
of individual humans, the latter as consisting of
external, purely material structures void of any
imaginal dimension.
It is not only astrology that belies
this view. Flashes of clairvoyance or precognition and
striking synchronicities are phenomena that just about
everyone has experienced at some time or another. The
more deeply one delves into this kind of experience, the
more one is forced to recognize a dream-like
underpinning to reality. This dream world
interpenetrates our ordinary reality, present everywhere
and nowhere. Different traditions refer to it with
different terms. Sufi scholar Henry Corbin termed it the
mundus imaginalis, or imaginal world, coining the word
"imaginal" to denote a kind of reality that is
neither physical nor purely imaginary.2 It is the
realm within which the dead, the angels, demons, and
archetypal presences move.
Astrology,
the science of seeing the soul of the sky, is part of a
greater vision: that eye that opens each thing like a
poetic treasure, perceiving at work within it the
divine imagination that animates the world.
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About The Author |
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Pierz
Newton-John is an astrologer and pychotherapist practicing in Melbourne,
Australia. He is "interested in tying together ideas in archetypal
psychology with astrological theory and working on deepening the
philosophical underpinnings of astrological practice". He majored in
the History and Philosophy of Science at Melbourne University and is also
a classical guitarist, poet, and amateur astronomer. Readers are welcome
to contact him at 80 Herbert Street, Northcote, Victoria 3070, Australia,
by phone at 011 6 13 9482 3018, or e-mail at
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
This article is excerpted from a longer article which was first printed in the June/July 1999 issue of The
Mountain Astrologer. www.mountainastrologer.com.
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The
Australian aborigines refer to it as the
"dreamtime" by which they do not mean a
remote epoch, but another timeless dimension.
Consciousness researcher Stanislav Grof talks of the
"holotropic mode" of consciousness, which can
be accessed through psychotropic drugs or breath
techniques, within which one can travel freely through
time, space, and worlds beyond both.
(3) For David
Bohm,
the innovative quantum physicist, it is the
"implicate order", a hidden order of reality
within which everything is connected to everything else.
(4)
James
Hillman, in his essay "The Soul of the World,"
(5) has put forward a notion of the world's soul based
on the sensual presentation of physical forms. According
to Hillman the anima mundi or soul of the world is to be
perceived directly in the "inherent
intelligibility" of forms in the world. He argues
that every thing, place, or animal in the world, whether
constructed or natural, has a presence to the
imagination through its "physiognomy" as a
sensual form. The precision, freedom of spirit, and
fierceness of the eagle's soul can be read in the
aquiline form, just as the sensitivity, gentleness, and
reflectiveness of the deer are made manifest in its
movements and its whole presence to the senses.
According to Hillman, this expressiveness of physical
forms is the presence of soul in the world, and it is as
much present in architecture, technology, and designed
interiors as it is in the places and organisms of the
natural world.
(6)
This idea could lead us to a kind of
radical extension of the astrological principle, so that
all things are possessed of a certain "astrological"
character. Just as every stone has its minute
gravitational influence, every stone might also be a
microcosmic astrological planet, a living presence with
symbolic and psychic import. The astrological character
of the planets might be just one example of the presence
of soul qualities in the world.
Continued
on the next page:
* The Resonance of Imagination;
* Detachment and Objectivity;
* Seeing with the Soul's Eyes
?1999 Pierz Newton-John -
all rights reserved
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