Astrology: Synchronicity and Cosmic Dances

"The most profound truths are at once the most veiled and the most all encompassing.." (Richard Tarnas).

How does astrology work? That is the question everyone asks. To be honest I don't know. All I know is that the more I study and practice astrology, the more I value the knowledge. I see that astrology provides profound insight into many areas of life and I remain open and curious about the 'how'.

What follows is my hypothesis of how astrology works. Actually, it's probably more a string of ideas than a hypothesis. Regardless, note the definition of the word hypothesis - "a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation".

Intimations of a New World View

Written by Harvard graduate Richard Tarnas, the book Psyche and Cosmos published in 2006 contains 30 years of research and proposes the existence of relationships between planetary transits and events in the lives of major historical figures, as well as relationships between planetary transits and cultural events i.e. that there is a connection between cosmic cycles and archetypal patterns of human existence.

Consciousness as a Cosmic Phenomenon

The maxim "as above, so below" is an expression of a world view where cosmic events (movements of the planets and luminaries (etc.) around the sun) not only happen "above us", but also "in us" and "through us" as human beings on earth. In this world view, human beings are an extension of our cosmic reality rather than a different, special and separate (alienated) entity, mysteriously and inexplicably cohabiting earth. Consciousness is not created by a neurophysiological event - but rather, consciousness is omnipresent (a cosmic phenomenon) and "tuned into" by our (human) neurophysiology (Richard Tarnas).

Grof and Sagan

Stanislav Grof tells the story of a meeting with Carl Sagan in which Sagan, having heard of Grof's work with planetary cycles and their correlation to human behavior, says to Grof "there is a greater chance that I, standing here in front of you now, have more of an influence on you than Pluto". Sagan's error from an astrology perspective, is his misunderstanding of Pluto's 'influence' as a linear-causal phenomenon, rather than something else - let's call it, for the purposes of the astrology hypothesis, a "synchronous" one.

Wolfgang Pauli & the Pauli Principal

Further to this, let us say that the causal principle works on "Matter A" and the idea of synchronicity works on "Matter B". The best way of conceptualizing the possibility of "Matter B" (as distinct from "Matter A") and planetary influence on cycles of life on earth, is through Wolfgang Pauli's "Pauli Principle".

I found this explanation of synchronicity and the "Pauli Principle" written by Peter Levenda in his book Sinister Forces—The Manson Secret: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft: 3, the most accessible: "Jung posited that there are relationships among events that are not part of the cause-and-effect nexus, and that these relationships come to our attention when a large number of coincidences take place. While he had been aware of this phenomenon for quite some time and witnessed it in his own life and in the lives of his patients, development of a formal theory awaited his relationship with the Austrian scientist Wolfgang Pauli. It was Pauli who actually “proved” Heisenberg correct, and made a substantial contribution to quantum mechanics by his own “exclusion principle” or what is known as the “Pauli principle”. "

Cosmic Dances and Renegade Physicists

Peter Levenda continues "The math behind this principle is daunting ... but suffice it to say that it involves principles of symmetry and asymmetry and explains the wonderful diversity of nature as a kind of cosmic “dance”. Theoretical physicist Dr. F. David Peat, who worked with renegade physicist David Bohm and who once interviewed Werner Heisenberg, Pauli’s friend and classmate, has expressed the Pauli Principle this way: Electrons, protons, neutrons, and neutrinos, along with other particles, form one group (and engage in an antisymmetric dance) while the other group includes mesons and photons of light (and forms a symmetric dance). It turns out that, in the former case, the nature of this abstract movement or dance has the effect of keeping particles with the same energy always apart from each other. However, this exclusion of particles from each other’s energy space is not the result of any force which operates between them nor indeed is an act of causality in the normal sense, rather it arises out of the antisymmetry of abstract movement of the particles as a whole. Hence the underlying pattern of the whole dance has a profound effect on the behavior of each individual particle".

Peter Levenda continues "Thus we are talking about a pattern or matrix underlying the observed universe, a kind of grid of connections linking events according to a system we can only barely perceive, a pattern that is in motion if we take Pauli’s symmetric and asymmetric dances literally. It is this pattern that differentiates one element from another, and which contributes to everything from, as Peat explains, “the intense coherent light of the laser as well as superfluids and superconduction” on the one hand to “the collapse of a star through the white dwarf, neutron star, and black hole stages” on the other. In other words, all of physical creation. Peat sees this as a basis for a coherent theory of synchronicity, as the relation between the particles in Pauli’s exclusion principle “is not the result of any force which operates between them nor indeed is an act of causality.” Thus, we have links between particles that defy normal cause-and-effect calculations. And these are the particles that make up the universe as we know it, and everything in it." (from "Sinister Forces—The Manson Secret: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft: 3 by Peter Levenda, Paul Krassner).

Astrology and Planetary Archetypes

If we take the idea of "abstract movement or cosmic dance" as referred to by Levenda above, it most closely approximates the idea of astrological planetary archetypes in my astrology hypothesis. Each cosmic body (planet, luminary etc.) can be seen to have a unique "cosmic dance" and the astronomical position of the planet interacts with the cosmic dances of the planets in astronomical relationship to it. "As above, so below" means that the planetary relationship archetypes visible in the skies above us, communicates (i.e. mirrors, not causes) the archetypal patterns of human existence happening within us and through us (personal, social, cultural, generational etc.).

"Consciousness at the forefront of astrophysics research" - let's hope they start where Pauli left off.

#richellesteynastrology