Perennial Astrology

The Marriage of Astrology and Psychology

What is Perennial Astrology?

In Antiquity, astrology was part of the hermetic corpus scientia that the philosopher or sage studied. As such, it was a sacred science, a part of cosmic knowledge and a tool for self-knowledge.

Astrology was not dissected from astronomy; the two ways of projecting macroscopic events were complimentary sources of knowledge. Astrology was an integral part of perennial philosophy, the queen of a body of knowledge known as the ‘Hermetic Sciences.’

It was unthinkable, still in the Middle Ages, that an erudite or sage would not study astrology and excel in it whether for personal or mundane forecasting, or just for learning about cosmic laws. The past millennium was perhaps the culmination point of ignorance in the whole run of human history. The Church’s absolute power quest was based upon the ignorance of the common believer, and therefore knowledge became a form of subversion, generally knowledge about the roots and functions of life, and in particular self-knowledge.

However, we can see that astrology went all the way through to us, from ancient times until today, and astrologers were among the wisest people in the world. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was known to be an excellent astrologer, Isaac Newton (1643-1727) is said to have had solid knowledge about not only astronomy but also astrology. And Nostradamus, the French astrologer and prophet Michel de Nostredame (1503-1566), was one of the most powerful psychics and visionaries of all times. He was the personal consultant of kings and queens and the basis of all his psychic power was astrology.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, astrology became more and more vulgarized and the use of the true astrology remained a knowledge tool for a minority of educated and spiritual individuals while the majority became more and more indoctrinated by the mass media to believe in a reductionist form of it, the so-called rainbow press astrology.

Today, there is a profound split between true (perennial) astrology which is a science, and popular astrology which is at best a pleasant social game. This difference between serious astrology, and its vulgarized popular forms, is to be seen both on the competence level and on the motivation level.

Modern astrology is a science and an art that requires not only intelligence and commitment, but also both analytical and intuitive / associative thinking capabilities, based upon a profound base knowledge of mythology, psychology and psychoanalysis. It is concerned with truth and helping people to identify and accept the truth of their greater life cycle and cosmic identity.

For example, telling you that you are a Gemini by your sun sign reveals to you rather little about yourself since there are millions of people in every country that are born in the sign of Gemini. Second, serious astrologers are not primarily motivated by money gain or to appear in fashionable media, but solely by the positive impact that their work may have on prospective clients. In this respect, they not only have a similar approach to work ethics as psychologists and counselors, but they are actually a new vintage of psychologists and counselors.

Astrology consultants help their clients to live with a greater sense of identity, to derive more satisfaction from the effective realization of their unique talents, to live a life that is more balanced and more healthy and to use their resources in a way that their high-energy input comes back to them in a transformed form of this energy—which is money, fame and recognition.

The Marriage of Astrology and Psychology

Our modern tradition of astrology has its root in the first part of the 20th century. There are three names associated with this tremendously vigorous new start of an old science. These men are Carl Jung, Max Heindel and Dane Rudhyar. In the 1930s, Dane Rudhyar called it ‘humanistic astrology’ in his book ‘The Astrology of Personality’ (1936), and about the same time, Carl Jung gained merit in studying the deeper connections between perennial astrology and what he called the ‘archetypes.’ Jung wrote:

Obviously astrology offers much to psychology, but that which the latter can contribute to its elder sister is less obvious.

—Carl Jung quoted in Stephen Arroyo, Astrology and the Four Elements: An Energy Approach to Astrology & Its Use in teh Counseling Arts, Sebastopol, CA: CRCS Publications, 1975, p. 6.

But the archetypes are to be seen as a sub-realm of the greater realm of mythology, which was always playing a defining role for astrology. In fact, astrology and mythology cannot be separated. That mythology is important for our lives, there was no better author than Joseph Campbell to demonstrate it. He wrote:

Man cannot maintain himself in the universe without belief in some arrangement of the general inheritance of myth. In fact, the fullness of life would even seem to stand in direct ratio to the depth and range not of his rational thought, but of his local mythology.

—Joseph Campbell, quoted by Stephen Arroyo, op. cit.

Stephen Arroyo’s books are so important because he was himself an accredited psychologist, however dissatisfied with the mechanistic structures involved in this science, its pretended ‘objectivity’, and the lack of an overarching method that is valid for a counselor in relation to all his patients. He also criticizes in his books the fact that psychology is divided today in many schools, and psychoanalysis just as well, so how can a counselor find a unifying approach that he or she can fit in their general counseling practice? Stephen Arroyo writes:

A psychology based upon observable behavior, assuming that only ‘objective’ data is worthwhile, is really no psychology at all. To restrict the domain of psychology to the laboratory study of animals and to the overt behavior pattern of human beings is inconsistent with the definition of the supposed object of study: the psyche itself, that mind-soul-spirit quality that pervades all human endeavors and perhaps all of creation. /12

Further, Arroyo emphasizes that astrology has this unifying methodology which makes it not a ‘mechanistic’ science in the modern science, but a science which is an art at the same time, and perhaps more an art than a science. Now, what is this unifying methodology? It is astrology’s symbolic language. He writes:

The fact that astrology is the most complete symbolic language has been noted by many psychologists … [b]ut the question of what these symbols refer to remains unanswered. Symbols are, after all, symbols for the very reason that they refer to living realities that are inexpressible (at least at the present time) in any other way. Perhaps this question can never be answered. Perhaps man can never express in words the transdendent realities of the cosmos. Still we can make use of this symbolic language if we consider it to represent universal patterns, principles, and forces, however transcendent such factors may be. Nethertheless, the symbolic approach to astrology is only complete and useful if it is seen within the framework of a holistic approach to life. /39

Today humanistic psychologists are attempting to create a psychology which emphasizes such positive factors as self-actualization, creativity, attaining higher consciousness, and realizing in an immediate way one’s essential self. In astrology, the humanistically oriented psychology, educator, counselor, or layman may find his most powerful and useful tool; for astrology presents us with a language which precisely describes the unique combination of universal factors operating within each of us. /50