Astrology and the potential unity of the world

Through his collaboration with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, Jung came to the conclusion that the unconscious is not limited to the domain of psychology, but rather is related to the structures of matter. Thus, matter and psyche are no longer two separate, antinomic spheres. Their roots originate in a common original structure which Jung, echoing the philosophers of the Middle Ages, called the unus mundus. Astrology draws from this source. And science, through its roots, shares the same soil. For, the real history of science reveals how its founders worked from symbolic forms that rose from the unconscious. Kepler, father of new astronomy in the XVII century, was a devotee of astrology - an aspect of his personality tagged by science's XIX century historians as the "bad part". Nonetheless, new translations of Kepler's works reveal the integration of astrological symbols with his scientific research. They were, in fact, intermingled. They guided Kepler towards groundbreaking hypotheses which are the foundation of modern science. Newton, Kepler, and all the great innovators of science needed the symbolism of alchemy and astrology, or other elements, in order to invent. In any case, the roots of science always originate outside of its own field. Thus, as they are built upon a similitude between the unconscious psyche and the exterior world, one might say that all scientific or religious attempts to order chaos and mold reality are projections of the unconscious. Of course, science does not confine itself to the level of vision. Instead, it puts into place a process of discrimination and organization which, in physics, results in laws that are expressed by mathematical language. The human mind tends to seize these visions as if they were eternal truths, but the moment comes when observed events no longer coincide with a given vision or hypothesis and no longer correspond with the relevant scientific theory or model. At this moment, we recognize them as projections and the hypothesis in question must be abandoned for new approaches.

So science, like astrology, is a projection by the unconscious onto the unknown. The knowledge of the unconscious is an unknowing knowledge which Jung described as a "cloud of knowledge" and named "absolute knowledge". Only at this level of the unconscious' absolute knowledge, where the potential unity of the universe lies, are science and astrology one and the same thing. It is when man or mankind become aware of the knowledge of the unconscious, that symbolic forms, scientific concepts and physical laws can be generated. But, at this stage, a new level of reality emerges - that of developed manifestation. Here, religious systems find their uniqueness and scientific disciplines are defined. Here appears the distinction between archetypal forms and the empty forms of archetypes. According to Jung, archetypes, the nuclei of the unconscious, cannot be perceived by the conscious but rather are empty matrices which the conscious fills with the particulars of a dream or the elements of a distinct culture. Hence the absurdity of debates about the validity of such and such an astrological system and especially about the equinoctial precession. For roughly 2000 years, the Western world has used the mobile zodiac of signs because it best incarnates the constantly changing occidental way of life. At this level of manifestation, it is therefore an illusion to seek unity between the different systems of astrology or to seek a relation between science and astrology. Hence, the need to have a vertical vision of reality.

Author: Alain Negre