Jung and the Zodiac

People often ask, "Do you really believe in astrology?" You might just as well ask if I believe in psychology, or archeology, or biology, or any other body of study.

Now, ask me if I "believe" in archetypes. Yes, as much as I believe in air and water and earth. We can see across all cultures on this planet certain images and symbols that express energies we have experienced ourselves, if we are introspective enough to have noticed.

All human beings know the Mother, the Lover, the Warrior, the Mystic, the Demon, and more. We resonate to the Hero's Journey. The difference between a great book or film and a merely amusing one lies in its evocation of deep archetypal meaning.

Jung saw that the zodiac is in fact our projection of inner archetypes into the sky. In an earlier age, the night was dark, darker than we in the West can now imagine, and yet brilliantly lit by millions of stars. People looked up, and just as we play games with clouds overhead, they pointed to the shapes they saw. One identified an Archer, another the Scorpion, another the Lion. As the stars appeared to move around the earth in its seasons, meaning attached. Over time, those who studied the stars codified their understandings and taught.

What is the zodiac? One way astrologers think of it is as an imaginary ring or band large enough to encompass our solar system. This band is marked off in twelve segments, one for each astrological sign, from Aries through Pisces, turning counterclockwise. We say a planet is "in" a certain sign when our gaze looking up at that planet would continue on past the planet, to that sign's segment in the imaginary band, turning out in space. Another way is to imagine that the zodiac is a transparent band or ring that surrounds the earth, and as we look up, we look through the sign's segment above us to see the planet "in" the sign.

Astrological influence is not about the actual planet's gravitational pull on our bodies. I have no doubt there is an effect--how else can natal charts ring so true?As yet, we can't prove it. But there is still much science can't prove; for example, we cannot yet describe the Unified Field, which will marry quantum physics with Einstein's. (If the Scientist is an major archetype for you, check out astrologer Rick Levine on You-tube, describing astrology's connection to quantum physics.)

Astrology is the study of energies and archetypes and the very depths of our interconnection in the Collective Unconscious. I am an astrologer. I'm not a fortune teller. I use astrology, and the Tarot, as projection holders--technologies to explore archetypal energies that evoke the wisdom of the right side of the brain. I do an end-run around my much too busy frontal lobes. I open, to something greater than this concrete, macro physical world I think I know.

Jung taught me this.