Returning Soul
to Astrology
by Bradley W.
Kochunas
 If the abundance of books on a
specific subject measures the pulse of popular culture, there is a seeming
revival of soul as a topic of cultural interest. Four years after its release,
Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul continued
on bestseller lists, and his more recent work, Soulmates, has done well in its
release. Moore's mentor, James Hillman, has seen his works reissued by a major
publisher; and Hillman's colleague, Robert Sardello, has also witnessed his
writing move into popular print. In addition, browsing the religion and New Age
sections, the number of books with soul in the title appears to have increased
markedly over the last several years. The immense profusion of these works
suggests a renewed claim to bring soul back to the attention of the postmodern
consciousness, to reawaken the sacred in our everyday lives.
Moore offers that what we suffer from
is a loss of soul. But what is soul and what does it mean to suffer its loss?
Following Moore and Hillman, I would like to keep soul vaguely defined, diffuse,
and ambiguous, except to say that I do not mean the soul to be a theological
entity or some kind of spiritual substance of the person. Rather, soul is more a
perspective on things, the imaginative possibilities within our natures, that
part of us that deepens events into experience.1 To quote Heraclitus
(6th century B.C.E.), "You could not discover the limits of soul, even if you
traveled every road to do so; such is the depth of its meaning."2
Therefore, rather than attempt to precisely define the meaning of soul, I would
prefer to circumambulate and amplify it for understanding.
I would contend that soul's absence
denotes a loss of depth, meaning, and attachment. In a society driven by
disposable consumerism, we have lost a deep understanding of lack, of doing
without, of making do, of abstinence, celibacy, solitude, restraint, and
limitation. Americans tend toward expansive, growth-oriented, manic, Jupiterian
lifestyles and leave no place for Saturnine melancholia. In an effort to
increase the levity and leisure in our lives, we have neglected the gravity of
existence. We move restlessly about, disposing of dwellings, vehicles,
relationships, possessions; changing our beliefs, families, and lifestyles as
easily as changing undergarments; and pursuing the fantasy of growth and
progress.
We are by no means materialists as
some would clamor, but rather we are spiritists who have little or no
appreciation for the material world, while believing in the abstraction or idea
of things with no attachment to the things themselves. We live in counterfeit
and artifice -- processed foods that mimic real food, plastics that appear as
wood grain and stone, pressed fiber masquerading as housing timber, spun oil
having us believe it's silk. There is little appreciation for the real thing or
for the time it takes to create and cultivate the real thing. This is the plight
of a puer nation, the eternally youthful qualities of which are limitless
possibility, highflying spirit, Promethean ethics, hubris, linear progress,
adventurousness, and a strong-willed heroic ego. In America all we have to do is
put our spirited minds to it, and we can achieve it.
The puer is a figure reflected
in myth by Icarus, Bellerophon, Phaeton, Prometheus, the stories of The
Little Prince, and the promiscuous Don Juan. These figures move in the realm
of spirit flight, lacking any appreciation for the ordinary and the mundane.
They are ungrounded, preferring the spiritual ascent to the mountain top, rather
than a murky descent of soul to the common and humble realities of everyday
life. We live in a culture split between mind and body, spirit and matter. When
these are not intimately connected to one another, we find a disdain for matter,
body, the feminine, and history, and we place a high value on spirit, progress,
abstraction, and the future.
Marsilio Ficino, a 15th-century
Renaissance philosopher, upon whom Hillman and Moore rely, places soul as the
middle ground between these seeming polarities. In commenting upon mind, body,
and soul's relation, Ficino writes: "We are easily moved by soul, first and
foremost because it is the first mobile thing, mobile from itself and of its own
doing ....It contains in itself all the middles of things, and is thus nearest
to each. It is connected to all things, in the middle of these things that are
distant from each other, for they are not distant from
it."3
When soul is lost by a culture, there
is nothing to connect mind and body, no middle ground to keep these realms
attached. And thereby we suffer the untethered elevation of spirit and the
degradation of matter as reflected in the deterioration of the environment, the
despising of the body, shoddy materialism, the oppression of women, and
substance abuse.
The archetypal perspective that holds
a culture defines its philosophy, religion, and psychology. A puer
culture provides us with a scientific philosophy, a solar monotheism, and a
spirit psychology emphasizing ego, will, intention, mastery, and peak
experiences.4 It takes on finer shades of subtlety in the notions of
personal growth, problem-solving, and self-determination.
But what does all this mean for
contemporary astrology? An astrology that moves forward focused upon
self-mastery, personal growth, problem-solving, prediction, control, providing
answers to life's problems, and simplifying our lives is an astrology that often
neglects the longing of soul for attachment, complexity, repetition, otherness,
meandering, and depth. It is an astrology used as one more weapon in the arsenal
of the heroic ego in its move away from a soulful life.
I raise this issue of soul and
astrology because of my position that astrology is an imaginal discipline that
is more closely related to religion than it is to science; more related to
poetry, fiction, and myth than to theorem, fact, and equation. Thus it should be
taken less literally and more as a way of imagining the worlds.5 This
has not been a prominent position in much of the astrological literature, which
seems to emphasize the need to empirically prove the validity of astrology and
champion it as an accurate tool for the prediction of concrete events. What I
see when I look through the bookstore shelves on astrology are works that widen
astrology, offering more and numerous techniques for this or that arena of
practice. But I don't find the works that deepen this discipline.
Many of us recall Carl Sagan
denouncing astrology as unscientific, and he is right. But what he failed to
realize, as Rollo May pointed out, is that astrology has an entirely different
basis than science. Astrology is myth and requires the language of myth for it
to be meaningful to us.6 Each one of us carries within an image of
our world, our imago mundi, and projects it into a more or less orderly
universe, which becomes the stage upon which our fate is played out. To the
extent that we are unconscious of this, we feel that life events are imposed
from without rather than recognizing that we ourselves are the co-creators of
our destinies.7
In the imaginings of astrology, this
world image is the natal chart. It is both a literal map of the solar system and
an imaginal map of our interior sky, a topography of the psyche. Astrology
fantasizes an ecological model of humanity, viewing people as interconnected and
interdependent expressions of a living cosmos, rather than a dead and mechanical
clockwork universe. The same structuring principles and processes at work in
nature are also at work in us, allowing us to see form and movement in our lives
as metaphorically reflected in the movement of the sky. This living cosmos
"speaks" to us through its symbolism, providing a rich framework for imagining a
profound intimacy between ourselves and our environment. It is through engaging
this map that we give voice to our deepest connections voices that are not
always our own, voices that may sound foreign and other. Yet it is these inner
figures, at play in sacred theater, that lay claim to us and clamor for our
attention. These divinities, which are various facets of soul expressing its
needs, bring us their stories over and over again. In listening to them, perhaps
speaking as our symptoms and pathologies, we learn about soul. We cultivate the
empathic imagination, and thereby, we extend soul back into the
world.
The astrological map, as with all
maps, is used for purposes of orientation. It may help us to discover something
about where we are in life, about finding our center, getting our bearings, and
perhaps, recognizing more clearly the wide meandering of our life journey. The
natal map mirrors how we are, how the god/desses play in our lives. It is not
the cause of what we have or will become. It simply reflects the archetypal
realities through which we shape and are shaped by our world. As a map of our
inner landscape, a soul image, it is best not used to predict concrete life
events or to provide solutions to the problems of living. Rather, it asks us to
explore the various fantasies in which we are engaged and perhaps leads us
toward a life deeply enriched and possessed of satisfying
attachments.
Yet the questions arise. What are the
practical aspects of this soulful perspective? How can it be applied? Isn't that
what all of us wish to know? The answers are not simple, as the very question
emerges out of an heroic perspective. We want this to be another hard-muscled
ego project that we can pin down, define, organize, and execute. A soulful
approach is not that simple. There is a lot of wandering and meandering, false
starts, roadblocks, going around in circles, all of which require us to have
patience and tolerance for the strange and the foreign. We often need to sit
with our charts and let them cook and simmer inside us. There is a time for
incubation and waiting, for brooding and mulling, letting soul stir its own
cauldron while we attend to the various divinities in our lives. That is what
therapy is about for Hillman and Moore. The word therapy derives from Greek and
has to do with waiting upon, attending, and serving the god/desses.
Returning soul to astrology means
that we need to lose the heroic perspective. We may wish to reconsider viewing
the chart as something to master and manipulate, to problem solve, or to use for
personal growth. The chart as soul image has us, not we it. The ego's needs are
not necessarily soul's needs. Progress, betterment, improvement, and growth may
have little interest for soul, belonging more to the hero's fantasy. If we, with
our clients, can attend to our charts, really engage them, tell stories about
the mythological figures, play with the images that arise -- these are
activities of making soul. Working with charts in this fashion is a slow
process. Many clients, lost to the modern fantasy of more and better, will not
have time for it. They want the quick answers, the sure bets, the minimal
effort. But life is an alchemical process and with enough attentiveness and
imagination, we see that change and transformation occur of their own accord.
Clients can be enriched by starting where they are, rather than where they want
to be.
As an astrologer, try speaking for
the dark parts of the chart. Don't try to suggest to clients how they can change
their muck or solve their problems, thus cheating them of their discomfort. Help
them to find the gold buried within it, to find soul within the symptom. We are
oftentimes too quick with our efforts to be helpful, relieving our own
uneasiness, rather than sitting in the space with our client and stewing with
them. It is necessary to examine our own need to help others, our own levels of
discomfort with their distress.
Returning soul to astrology is not
always an easy task; and it is only one move among many in using astrology. It
can, however, bring a deeper level to our work. Take astrology seriously, but
not literally. Soul moves at its own pace and cannot be rushed or forced, only
presented with opportunities for its making. Perhaps we might consider the
cultivation of imagination as the goal of astrological work. Explore the
fantasies of the client -- the dreams, wants, wishes, desires, foibles,
failures, and fears. And in this doing, this imaging of the concrete, we also
concretize the imagination, spiraling soul back into the world.
This article was first published in The Mountain
Astrologer Magazine, Aug/Sept. 1996 issue. For info or a subscription, go to www.mountainastrologer.com
References and Notes:
1. James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, New York:
Harper Row, 1975, p.x.
2. E. Wheelwright, Heraclitus, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1959, p. 58.
3. C. Boer, Marsilio Ficino: The Book of Life, Irving, TX: Spring
Publications, 1980, p. 87.
4. Bradley Kochunas, "Drawing Down the
Moon: An Exploration of Lunar Psychology," The Astrotherapy Newsletter, Fairfax,
CA: The Association for Astrological Psychology, August 1990.
5. Bradley Kochunas, "Reimagining
Astrology," The Astrotherapy Newsletter, Fairfax, CA: The Association for
Astrological Psychology, April 1989.
6. Rollo May, The Cry for Myth, New York:
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1991, p. 22.
7. H. Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, Irving, TX: Spring Publications, 1980, p. 8.
©1996 Bradley W. Kochunas - all rights
reserved
 Recommended
Book:
The Gods of Change: Pain, Crisis and the Transits of Uranus,
Neptune and Pluto
by Howard Sasportas.
Info/Order
book
About The
Author
Bradley W. Kochunas, LPC/CCMHC, is a
licensed clinical counselor with board certification in clinical mental health
counseling and addictions counseling. He uses astrology in his work with
clients. He welcomes all correspondence. You can contact him at Box 2212,
Middletown, OH 45044, (513) 422-1425, or send email to
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