"... 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?

To put it simply, we cannot. We will never find a satisfactory answer to the "how" of astrology, if we look for it in the form of an objective mechanism. Purely mechanistic explanations, however sophisticated, are unable to address the domain of qualities and, therefore, fail to touch on the essence of what astrology is about, as astrological writers have frequently enough pointed out. 

The core language of science is numbers. Ultimately, all its reductions lead toward numerical formalisms. Astrology, on the other hand, is founded in a language of symbols, a language that is native to the imagination, rather than the rational intellect. In the final analysis, then, science and astrology are incommensurable because the two systems have completely different ontologies (ideas about the nature of being).


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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.


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)

Although this world is inner in the sense that it is accessed through an alteration of consciousness, it is not inner in the sense of being confined within a physical structure such as the brain or body. Nor is it inner in the sense of being purely subjective, or unrelated to the physical world. Indeed its relevance to astrology lies precisely in the fact that it is contiguous at every point with the physical universe and inseparable from it. Every entity in the physical cosmos is also an imaginal entity. It evokes imagination in a particular way. It not only has a structure, but this structure betrays a particular quality of being that we might term its soul, even if it is a so-called inanimate object.

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.

The Resonance of Imagination

Take a moment to reflect on the environment around you right now, and consider the qualities of all the various objects in it. Consider how all these objects subtly impress themselves on your imagination in a particular way, as if they were planetoids in your personal cosmos. You exist this moment within a psychic field, a tension of qualitative presences. Our immediate environment is a kind of micro-astrological cosmos which possesses a certain feel that impinges upon us and which we also affect through our own character as souls. Everything is an originator of a unique qualitative influence, as the planets are. Everything resonates with and within the imagination.

Psychics, poets, and artists possess a particular sensitivity to this field of qualitative resonance in the world. Their gifts are grounded in that sense. For them, the world is not only a physical location, a structure in which they exist, it is always also a place in the imagination. They sense, in their different ways, the presence of imaginal processes moving through the world around them, not as something hidden, but as an immediately apprehensible reality. It is this soul-within-things that poets address themselves to when they meditate on a particular subject, soaking it, as it were, in the waters of their imagination until it leaches some of its essence.

One might object that we do not derive astrological meanings from reading the character of the planets as revealed in their appearances. Yet perhaps there is more in this idea than one might at first think. There is an appropriateness to the fluctuating, reflective shine of the Moon and the brilliant, golden light of the Sun in terms of their astrological symbolism. Likewise, Mars's red desert surface seems appropriate to its astrological character. Jupiter's turbulent, colorful surface could be the one-eyed face of a monstrous, jovial god. Saturn's sallow, muted sepia and the oceanic, mysterious blue of Neptune also seem fitting. However, I am not suggesting the reduction of astrology to mere appearances. We need to feel presences at a more subtle level, to attune to them, as it were, if we are not to be deceived by appearance. As an example, a group of people in a room together on one day may appear superficially very similar to the same group on another day, yet a very different mood may be present in the room. Ben Okri has written that "moods are stories unsaid, condensed in the air, untold."(7) In other words, moods are the presence of hidden imaginal processes.

Psychometrists are capable of reading subtle impressions from objects that allow them to garner information about the history of the object. A particular subtle atmosphere clings around places and objects that seems to carry condensed within it a great deal of information. Accessing this information is not a miraculous gift. It is merely a question of relative subtlety of perception. There is not, in fact, a sharp dividing line between gross physical perception and so-called psychic awareness. One leads quite naturally into the other when sensitivity is increased. This suggests, again, the interpenetration of imaginal and physical realities.

I am suggesting that astrology could be conceived in terms of what might be termed "imaginal resonance". This is the idea that the qualities of physical objects, from "inert" rocks to plants and animals, represent resonances with a fundamentally real world of purely imaginal presences. I believe it is unlikely that the Chaldeans first discovered the qualitative natures of the planets by a process resembling in any way our concept of empirical research. Rather, living as they did in a cosmos in which imagination and world were fused in an indivisible unity, I believe that the Chaldean astrologer-priests were probably capable of directly attuning themselves to the stars, just as we, at a cruder level, are capable of sensing the quality of a particular tree, place, or person.

Synchronicity and Subjectivity

I would like to contrast this conception of astrology with the popular explanation of astrology in terms of synchronicity. Although the term synchronicity validly describes a certain familiar category of experience ? the uncanny, meaningful coincidence ? I believe it is an inadequate metaphor for the workings.

Jung's concept of synchronicity postulates an acausal connection between the internal psyche and the world based on a principle of like meaning. This idea was enthusiastically embraced by astrologers as it allowed a description of astrology outside the constricting terms of mechanical cause and effect. Through his observation of striking coincidences between psychic events and external events, Jung developed the idea that a mysterious nexus exists between meanings in the mind and events in the world. This idea was readily rendered into the service of astrology: the planets did not cause a person to have a particular temperament. Rather, human psyche and planetary configuration were correlated by like meaning. The mediating factor in this process, according to Jung, was the archetype, a structure of the collective unconscious that was, in some way, capable of influencing or was, in some way, capable of influencing or being reflected in the course of objective events. (8)

The appeal of such an idea to astrology is clear, yet as an explanatory principle for astrological influence, synchronicity has problematic implications. By taking meaning as its core organizing principle, synchronicity tends to subsume astrology in an introverted perspective that orients itself toward the core of the human soul: the Self as epicenter of introspection. Ultimately it is this transcendental Self that is the hidden engineer of synchronicity in Jungian thought, and thus, when applied to astrology, the planets too are made to orbit around this axis.

In her book Jung and Astrology, (9) Maggie Hyde has expounded a model of astrology founded on a radical extension of the synchronicity principle. Hyde is one of a group of astrologers, led by Geoffrey Cornelius, who is moving away from an emphasis on "qualities in moments of time", such as Jung originally argued for, to a notion of astrology as divinatory ritual, similar to other systems such as tarot or I Ching. She suggests that astrology is founded not on any inherency of psychic qualities within the planets themselves, but on the mysterious way in which the objective world appears to cooperate with our projections. The use of astronomical tables, according to Hyde, is no more than a part of the divination ritual; the connection between astronomical events and the chart is not particularly important, although she stops short of dispensing with the ephemeris altogether.

This is a radical diminution of astrology, not a revolutionary advance. By internalizing the source of astrology, turning it into a projection of the introverted soul, astrology's fundamental value gets lost. Astrology has the potential to attune us to our soul-level participation in the cosmos. Once we turn astrology into a form of projection, we abnegate the challenge to redefine our view of the world in a way that allows the world itself to be granted its soul; instead, the world is compelled to rotate around the axis of our personal psychologies. Rather than engaging in an act of receptive dialogue with the cosmos, we forget the world and concentrate on "personal stuff", thus losing our connection to the cosmic dimension of the personal soul. We turn away from the dark mystery of the starry night and focus on our jejune paper-and-ink reduction of it. Furthermore, astrology as divination turns traditional astrology into a fait accompli with no reason to question or rework its foundations, no justification for research, no need or possibility of revision. Astrology's rules become arbitrary and self-justifying.

Detachment and Objectivity

It is certainly true, as Hyde argues, that the astrologer is no detached observer in the process of reading the chart. There are constant interpenetrations of symbolism between client and astrologer that render the notion of objectivity problematic. This is true of any area involving psychic material; dreams become enmeshed, odd parallel phenomena appear, the world itself takes on dream-like attributes. Yet reading these phenomena from a different perspective, we can take this not as evidence that the world obeys our projections, but as proof that we are part of the world's imagination. Imaginal processes present in the world are enacted through us and by us. We are participants and co-creators in these processes, but not their ultimate authors. The distinction between these two perspectives may seem subtle, but the consequences are significantly different. With the first interpretation we slide toward a subjectivism that locates significance within and reads confirmation of the importance of the subject in the outer world. The latter interpretation leads us to develop a disciplined focus on the imagination of the world and our place within this matrix. We unite with others and with the world and, in the process, come into closer union with our own sense of soul.

We do not need to link internal processes with external ones via the artificial nexus of synchronicity, but instead we can recognize an unbroken unity of soul in the world within which our individual souls are inseparably implicated. All of us are, in part, determined by the broader movements of our culture, by the hidden presence of our ancestors, by our immediate familial myths, and by-the subtle but deep infiltration of the qualities of our environment. Individuation can only have meaning insofar as it takes place within the matrix of these determinants, and there are undeniable contextual elements even to the individuation process itself. Different cultures and times have very different concepts of the enlightened or wise individual. All of this goes to show that world soul comes through many channels of which astrology is only one.

The world we see around us is rich in resonance with all these different levels. It is shot through with multiple threads of imagination that lead back to hidden stories, both historical and mythical. We can see the appearance of startling synchronicity as the surfacing of these threads that underlie the world and give it coherence as an image or story. We can recognize in the synchronistic event a confirmation not of personal significance, but of one's indivisibility from the deeply interwoven connections between things, a web of soul extending to the depths of space.

Seeing with the Soul's Eyes

Let me reiterate the basic thesis of this essay for purposes of clarity. Science, as we know it, fails astrology because it recognizes only the reality of physical structures in the world, not the presence of qualities. When we see qualities in the world as real, we must recognize the presence of an imagination that underpins reality. This imagination, or soul of the world, exists as a hidden or "implicate" order. Through their qualities, physical things resonate with this hidden order within which memories, spirits, and archetypal presences reside. Thus, through their "imaginal resonance", every thing in the cosmos makes manifest the enfolded possibilities of the imaginal world and is a window into other dimensions. This understanding provides a framework within which astrology makes natural sense and needs no further explanation in terms of mechanism.

In previous articles, I have argued for the importance of a living relationship with the night sky and for the instatement of the Earth among the pantheon of astrological planets. Readers may discern a consistent trend in the ideas I have been presenting. As suggested by the opening quotation of this article, the astrology I envision is about a sky and earth seen as a "vast language of dreams and omens". This open-eyed and wonder-filled astrology does not sever heaven from earth, for it recognizes that earth and sky are part of the same great unity. Nor does it get trapped within the narrow confines of a set of linguistic signs, but refers constantly back to the vast fact of the night sky. It labors to open the doors of the stars anew every night through repeated acts of imaginative effort.

The world's soul is in desperate need of resuscitation. It can be saved only through an awakening to soul both inner and outer, a learning to see with the soul's eyes. This is a reawakening of the hermetic sense that perceives in the world multiple resonances of imagination and metaphor. This vision can extend from a way of seeing the bright soul in the jasmine and wisteria thriving in one's own back garden to a burst of renewed astonishment at the beauty of Venus falling at dusk, a soul connection over millions of miles. 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.

?1999 Pierz Newton-John - all rights reserved


Recommended book: 

"Your Sun Sign as a Spiritual Guide" 
by Kriyananda 
(J. Donald Walters).

Info/Order book

Recommended books on Astrology


About The Author

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 can contact him at 80 Herbert Street, Northcote, Victoria 3070, Australia, by phone 011 6 13 9482 3018, e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. This article was first printed in the June/July 1999 issue of The Mountain Astrologer. www.mountainastrologer.com.


{mospagebreak}

Astrology &
The Soul of the World

by Pierz Newton-John

Continued from Part I

The Resonance of Imagination

Take a moment to reflect on the environment around you right now, and consider the qualities of all the various objects in it. Consider how all these objects subtly impress themselves on your imagination in a particular way, as if they were planetoids in your personal cosmos. You exist this moment within a psychic field, a tension of qualitative presences. Our immediate environment is a kind of micro-astrological cosmos which possesses a certain feel that impinges upon us and which we also affect through our own character as souls. Everything is an originator of a unique qualitative influence, as the planets are. Everything resonates with and within the imagination.

Psychics, poets, and artists possess a particular sensitivity to this field of qualitative resonance in the world. Their gifts are grounded in that sense. For them, the world is not only a physical location, a structure in which they exist, it is always also a place in the imagination. They sense, in their different ways, the presence of imaginal processes moving through the world around them, not as something hidden, but as an immediately apprehensible reality. It is this soul-within-things that poets address themselves to when they meditate on a particular subject, soaking it, as it were, in the waters of their imagination until it leaches some of its essence.

We need to feel presences at a more subtle level, to attune to them, as it were, if we are not to be deceived by appearance. As an example, a group of people in a room together on one day may appear superficially very similar to the same group on another day, yet a very different mood may be present in the room. Ben Okri has written that "moods are stories unsaid, condensed in the air, untold."(7) In other words, moods are the presence of hidden imaginal processes.

Psychometrists are capable of reading subtle impressions from objects that allow them to garner information about the history of the object. A particular subtle atmosphere clings around places and objects that seems to carry condensed within it a great deal of information. Accessing this information is not a miraculous gift. It is merely a question of relative subtlety of perception. There is not, in fact, a sharp dividing line between gross physical perception and so-called psychic awareness. One leads quite naturally into the other when sensitivity is increased. This suggests, again, the interpenetration of imaginal and physical realities.

I am suggesting that astrology could be conceived in terms of what might be termed "imaginal resonance". This is the idea that the qualities of physical objects, from "inert" rocks to plants and animals, represent resonances with a fundamentally real world of purely imaginal presences. I believe it is unlikely that the Chaldeans first discovered the qualitative natures of the planets by a process resembling in any way our concept of empirical research. Rather, living as they did in a cosmos in which imagination and world were fused in an indivisible unity, I believe that the Chaldean astrologer-priests were probably capable of directly attuning themselves to the stars, just as we, at a cruder level, are capable of sensing the quality of a particular tree, place, or person.

Detachment and Objectivity

Article Source

Recommended book: 

"Your Sun Sign as a Spiritual Guide" 
by Kriyananda 
(J. Donald Walters).

Info/Order book

About The Author

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 email address is being protected from spambots. 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.

It is certainly true that the astrologer is no detached observer in the process of reading the chart. There are constant interpenetrations of symbolism between client and astrologer that render the notion of objectivity problematic. This is true of any area involving psychic material; dreams become enmeshed, odd parallel phenomena appear, the world itself takes on dream-like attributes. Yet reading these phenomena from a different perspective, we can take this not as evidence that the world obeys our projections, but as proof that we are part of the world's imagination. Imaginal processes present in the world are enacted through us and by us. 

We are participants and co-creators in these processes, but not their ultimate authors. The distinction between these two perspectives may seem subtle, but the consequences are significantly different. With the first interpretation we slide toward a subjectivism that locates significance within and reads confirmation of the importance of the subject in the outer world. The latter interpretation leads us to develop a disciplined focus on the imagination of the world and our place within this matrix. We unite with others and with the world and, in the process, come into closer union with our own sense of soul.

We do not need to link internal processes with external ones via the artificial nexus of synchronicity, but instead we can recognize an unbroken unity of soul in the world within which our individual souls are inseparably implicated. All of us are, in part, determined by the broader movements of our culture, by the hidden presence of our ancestors, by our immediate familial myths, and by-the subtle but deep infiltration of the qualities of our environment. Individuation can only have meaning insofar as it takes place within the matrix of these determinants, and there are undeniable contextual elements even to the individuation process itself. Different cultures and times have very different concepts of the enlightened or wise individual. All of this goes to show that world soul comes through many channels of which astrology is only one.

The world we see around us is rich in resonance with all these different levels. It is shot through with multiple threads of imagination that lead back to hidden stories, both historical and mythical. We can see the appearance of startling synchronicity as the surfacing of these threads that underlie the world and give it coherence as an image or story. We can recognize in the synchronistic event a confirmation not of personal significance, but of one's indivisibility from the deeply interwoven connections between things, a web of soul extending to the depths of space.

Seeing with the Soul's Eyes

Let me reiterate the basic thesis of this essay for purposes of clarity. Science, as we know it, fails astrology because it recognizes only the reality of physical structures in the world, not the presence of qualities. When we see qualities in the world as real, we must recognize the presence of an imagination that underpins reality. This imagination, or soul of the world, exists as a hidden or "implicate" order. Through their qualities, physical things resonate with this hidden order within which memories, spirits, and archetypal presences reside. Thus, through their "imaginal resonance", every thing in the cosmos makes manifest the enfolded possibilities of the imaginal world and is a window into other dimensions. This understanding provides a framework within which astrology makes natural sense and needs no further explanation in terms of mechanism.

In previous articles, I have argued for the importance of a living relationship with the night sky and for the instatement of the Earth among the pantheon of astrological planets. Readers may discern a consistent trend in the ideas I have been presenting. As suggested by the opening quotation of this article, the astrology I envision is about a sky and earth seen as a "vast language of dreams and omens". This open-eyed and wonder-filled astrology does not sever heaven from earth, for it recognizes that earth and sky are part of the same great unity. Nor does it get trapped within the narrow confines of a set of linguistic signs, but refers constantly back to the vast fact of the night sky. It labors to open the doors of the stars anew every night through repeated acts of imaginative effort.

The world's soul is in desperate need of resuscitation. It can be saved only through an awakening to soul both inner and outer, a learning to see with the soul's eyes. This is a reawakening of the hermetic sense that perceives in the world multiple resonances of imagination and metaphor. This vision can extend from a way of seeing the bright soul in the jasmine and wisteria thriving in one's own back garden to a burst of renewed astonishment at the beauty of Venus falling at dusk, a soul connection over millions of miles. 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.

?1999 Pierz Newton-John - all rights reserved