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Astrology is so much more than a predictive and prescriptive typology. It is a soulful and evocative tradition that engages us in both rational and imaginal ways of knowing. Each horoscope is an invitation to consider the gods that live through us and the archetypal powers that pave our path through life. In Soul, Symbol and Imagination, Brian Clark shares his experiences of astrology as a profoundly therapeutic, divinatory and spiritual modality that has shaped his life.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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SOUL, SYMBOL and IMAGINATION
The Artistry of Astrology
BRIAN CLARK
Acknowledgements
Astrology A Cosmic Science was the first book I read that introduced me to a soulful way of thinking about the artistry of astrology. It was 1972 and it was the ‘spiritual’ connection that spoke most clearly to me, but its author Isabel Hickey also spoke eloquently about soul and the magnitude of horoscope symbols. I was blessed to cross paths with Issie, as she was affectionately known, and her Star Rovers. Thank you Issie for opening the gate onto a magical pathway.
Our worldwide astrological family overflows with grace, warmth, humour, creativity, talent and wisdom and I thank each of you who have contributed to my way of thinking about the art of astrology and the many who have kindheartedly welcomed me into your community. At home in Australia I have been supported by colleagues, students and clients and their kindness, generosity and acknowledgment has infinitely enriched my life in ways I could never have imagined.
Thank you Narelle for your sponsorship of our Sydney Soul Seminars which helped me focus my gaze; Tom and Geoffrey for your soulful guidance, and Team Frank – Jane, Cat and Frank – for putting it all together.
Without Suzanne, Cameron, Melissa, Michaela, Lexi, Christina, Trinity, Alexandra, Lachlann and Glennys, my soul would never have sung.
And to you, the reader. May astrology touch your soul with its rich imagination and depth of insight,
Brian Clark July 2019 Stanley, Tasmania
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Renascence
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That cannot keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by1
Edna St Vincent Millay ‘Renascence’ 8
– PREFACE –
THE FINE ART OF ASTROLOGY
I remember clearly my first ‘professional’ astrological consultations over forty years ago; professional, because I began advertising my services as an astrological practitioner and charging fees. I remember too the immense responsibility and apprehension I felt. At the time, there was very little literature or conversation about astrological consulting; therefore, each consultation became a hands-on learning experience. I was not aware that astrology would become my life profession, but as I look back over these years I can see how my vocational journey opened out onto an expansive, unique and enriching field.
Clients from all walks of life and differing social, religious and ethnic backgrounds made appointments. With every client, I felt as if I was starting the astrological experiment all over again. I imagined my consulting room as both a sacred and a private space, closed off from the outer world during the ninety minutes that the client/s and I engaged in the consultation process. For the first few years of practice, my consulting room was in my house and the time I spent cleaning and rearranging both the house and the room felt as if I was tilling the ground in preparation for the consultation. This awareness of organizing the space to welcome the client always remained, as the ritual of preparing is an integral part of the consulting process. It was as if I was inviting not only the client into the space, but the gods as well. When I finally had my own dedicated consulting room, I intentionally chose the pictures, décor, statues and sculptures. At the time I was unaware that this was my attempt to create a psychic space where the unconscious could be present in a safe environment without judgement.
What was shared and revealed in these astrological sessions was often so intimate and private that an intense relationship was forged with the client in that moment. I never knew into what territory the consultation would lead us. While the horoscope offered clues as to the matters we might discuss, as much as possible I let the client lead the journey until the symbols of the horoscope began to speak. At 10the beginning of my practice I was unaware that the symbols could speak, since I was so focused on how to interpret them. Equipped with an armada of techniques, I was conscientious and mindful of how I might explain these images without the astrological jargon that meant so much to me but was a foreign language to the client. I discovered it was not the explanation, but the engagement with the client, being fully present and participating in the moment with the symbols, that really mattered.
As a novice I was trained to see the astrological symbols through descriptive and often prescriptive eyes, feeling pressure to delineate what I saw. Often an image would arrive unbidden or I would sense something beyond the traditional meaning of the astrological symbol. Over time I began to recognize how the presence of and participation with the symbol could open up the conversation and transport us to a place beyond my knowledge and sometimes beyond the client’s. The symbol was contained through its astrological correspondences. As the symbols began to reveal themselves in this way, I was led beyond the realm of my training and understanding. Astrology opened up other worlds to me.
Astrology called me. From my mid teens I had always been fascinated with other dimensions of reality, but in these early days my vocabulary was not diverse enough to describe what I meant by this. I recognized another world that was spiritual, not material. When applying the methods and techniques of astrology, I felt as if I was researching my life purpose, discovering unidentified characteristics in myself and others, questioning the authenticity of my beliefs and values. It was a study unlike anything else I had done before, as it encouraged self-reflection and examination. It invited my full participation, not just my intellect.
Later I found words like Self, individuation and heroic journey which were somewhat descriptive of the process, but words were never enough. It was the personal stories of my clients and the myths of our human collective that brought astrology to light. Conversations with my clients and their horoscopes led me into areas of life I had not yet encountered, nor quite understood. Therefore, counselling training became imperative to improve my ability to sit with the client through their pain, suffering, tears, betrayals, losses, confusion, despair, traumas and, at times, triumphs. I also sought out a sympathetic psychologist for supervision in order 11to talk about some of the processes taking place with me when I was engaged with clients. I sat in a psychic development circle, attended a regular dream group, studied Jungian psychology and went back to university to complete a Masters in Classics and Archaeology. There was always more to learn about astrology, as new developments were always taking place. But, as a practitioner of the art of astrology, I knew I needed to supplement my astrological learning with psychologically sound counselling practices and other philosophical worldviews to help me serve both astrology and the client.
As I reflect on my vocational journey, I see that astrology engages us in two dimensions of being: the rational and the imaginal, and that its symbols mediate the space between these worlds. The astrological symbols are portals to ways of knowing Life. As a practice which involves the archetypal world of ideas, images and symbols, it places the practitioner between the event and the experience, as the one who can see through the literal to the symbolic. Therefore, astrology is so much more than a predictive and prescriptive typology: it is a soulful and evocative practice. While my clients were often seeking answers and solutions to problems, I recognized that connecting with meaning and insight around their predicament seemed to be more valuable than a concrete answer. That was what drew them to my consulting room: not the problem, nor the answer, but the chance to engage in another way to understand what was happening to them. Paradoxically, in not knowing the answers or how the astrological images might manifest in the future, I could hear the symbols speak. Rather than trying to find them, they found me. It was the symbols that led me and the client to explore more fully and deeply the geography of the soul. For me it was, and still is, a magical practice.
Relocating to north-west Tasmania in 2014 heralded a slower pace of life and work. Astrology had been my vocation for over forty years and my full-time career for over thirty. Though we might change our profession, retire from our work or start a new occupation, vocation is intimately part of who we are. While the rhythm of my work altered, my vocation did not change; but now I had more time to contemplate my astrological life. Early one morning, during this period, I awoke with a table of contents from a book inscribed in my mind’s eye. I recognized that the list of 12chapters I saw was a way of organizing my thoughts, experiences and reflections. I recorded the table of contents as I saw it, and that morning, five years ago, I began writing what you are reading now.
This book is reflective in nature. It is not a ‘how to’ book, nor a book of ‘techniques’. What I hope it is, is a book of questions about the fine art of astrology and what happens when engaging in its mystery. If you are a student or practitioner of astrology, you have already encountered its magic. Although it has not always been an easy task, I have tried to be true to my experience as an astrologer to present my ways of thinking about the process of astrological consultation and connection. My reflections are notes to myself about this paradoxical non-linear world, which parallels the literality of the horoscope. In the following pages I look at the art of astrology through different lenses to amplify my experiences. In trying to conceptualize my own understanding, I have drawn on the wonderful ideas of many others who have explored similar otherworldly terrains from which astrology originates. Carl Jung’s and James Hillman’s psychological explorations are highly resonant for me, as the archetypal topography they charted is akin to the psychic landscapes I encountered in my astrological consultations and work. Thomas Moore’s writing on attending to the soul in our everyday lives has been enormously enriching and inspiring. Poets, especially the Romantic poets, stir my passion for romancing imagination, and I have gratefully borrowed some of their verse. My astrological community has a host of articulate symbolic thinkers who have enriched and inspired my understanding: Liz Greene and Geoffrey Cornelius are two such contemporary perceptive astrologers whose work I greatly admire.
Describing the art is difficult. Astrology has an elusive quality and is hard to pin down. As it is complicated, if not impossible, to articulate, I often reach for others’ ideas or explanations to relieve my uncertainty when struggling to express my understanding. I have tried to be true to my own experiences, not to intellectualize or moralize, but I cannot guarantee that I have always been successful. My task was to try to find my voice. What a difficult task, as often there are no words for the insightful encounter with psyche; attempts to speak about this often flatten the soulful experience. So 13much remains contained in the privacy, intimacy and mystery of the astrological symbols.
Astrology can be engaged in intellectually without psyche. It can be studied from the perspective of its rich cultural history, its development of theory and techniques or its mathematical symmetry. It is exceptional in charting the natural cycles of time both personally and collectively. As part of our culture and history, it is scholastically valued through the translations of its ancient texts and its affiliation and enmeshment with other forms of divination, healing, magic practices and mystery rites. But when psyche is engaged in astrological practice, something stirs, as if the soul has been heard and valued. What arises is not easily explicable. Its symbols are not causal; its revelations are not quantifiable. I can testify to the profundity of the art, but I cannot explain it. What happens in an astrological consultation belongs in that moment, sealed by psyche in its timeless vessel. So much remains in the intimacy and privacy of the consultation. Therefore, while case studies are valuable for teaching and verifying techniques, they cannot do justice to the soul, as it defies explanation and exposition. I have tried to offer some examples, not to validate astrology but to acknowledge its mystery.
Through the course of this book I endeavour to amplify the experience of soul or the psychic encounter in astrological practice through various lenses such as imagination, time, symbol, metaphor, night, creativity, symptom, fate, death, myth, vocation, place and dream: ways that soul breaches the surface of the horoscope. How can we begin to explore a more soulful application of astrology without conceptualizing or defining soul, but by acknowledging its mystery and ambiguity in astrological work? My hope is that I can draw on my experiences without too much explanation or rationalization so that a connection to soul in your astrological work can be acknowledged and valued in your own way.
Hence I begin with the question of soul, as for me it is at the heart of astrology. 14
– PROLOGUE –
CONSIDERING SOUL
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar2
William Wordsworth, ‘Ode on Intimations of Mortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’
The question of soul – our life’s Star – is fundamental to astrological practice and tradition. Each horoscope is an invitation to consider the gods that live through us and the archetypal powers that pave our path of life. However we consider soul, whether it is thought of as psyche, our inner life or perhaps the true or divine self, to an astrologer the symbols of the horoscope are keys that potentially unlock gates into its otherworldly realm. We may conceive of this double or secondary world as imaginary, psychic or spiritual; yet no matter how we conceptualize this place, this is where we encounter the sacred shards of soul.
Reflections on soul and its relationship to the horoscope vary considerably throughout astrological tradition depending on the epoch, the practitioner, their spiritual beliefs and philosophical orientation. Even though soul is ambiguous, defies description and is open to interpretation and imagination, it is the essence of astrological ritual. This question of soul is the heartbeat of astrology. Soul’s early roots were associated with the breath of life in the body.
Yet soul conveys something more than just breath – it is what gives life its depth, meaning and substance. Soul resonates with the inner life, embracing our private and spiritual self-essence, creative expression, even the vocation we are meant to follow. As an image of the life breath, soul authenticates the natal horoscope, which 16could be likened to a lifelong meditation on the first breath of life. The horoscope is akin to soul.
Symbols are the language of the soul. Through the auspices of astrological images and symbols, the practice of horoscopy kindles the connection to our essential nature. Horoscope symbols stimulate contemplation about living a heartfelt life and inspire revelations about our inner world and spiritual character. It is as if the symbols animate the horoscope, opening a new dimension that allows a deeper, unseen meaning to emerge. Like the soul itself, the horoscope spans two worlds: the incarnate and the heavenly; it can exist in the past, the present or the future while still remaining timeless. To imagine and work with the symbols of the horoscope as a way to affirm and animate this life force ensouls the practice of astrology.3 I imagine the horoscope to be like a vivid dream: the dream of one’s life. And, like a dream, it calls us to participate in a conversation with our soul whatever we might imagine that to be.
With no context or ways of thinking about soul, astrological practice can drift on a sea of ungrounded impressions and intuitions. When astrological practice succumbs to a mechanistic model, symbols become rationalized as the expression of a cosmic order; no longer symptoms of the soul, but causal signs. Without the inquiry into soul, astrological symbols remain fixed in literality, facts rather than images, interpretations rather than revelations. Without the depth that soul engages us in, astrology becomes a static form rather than a dynamic process. Engaged with soul, countless impressions are summoned up that are difficult, at times impossible, to articulate; yet this is the nature of soul.
Through time soul has accounted for the amorphous, yet eternal, aspect of the self that is freed from the body at death, a divine essence that needs to be saved from sin, even the ‘wow’ factor in a piece of uplifting music. Food, cities and buildings have been described as having soul. It is not material, but can be sensual and deeply felt; therefore its nature is of two worlds. Evocative, soul conjures up a collection of ideas, images, beliefs and feelings; but one thing seems common, which is that soul appears unworldly and eternal. It is an invisible quality that breathes life into the life, a smouldering ember that becomes a passionate flame. Soul cannot be manufactured or commoditized, but is present in an ephemeral thought, a profound experience, in reflective and timeless moments 17or in feeling the anguish of being human. Words such as alive, appetite, breath, character, chi, consciousness, essence, force, ghost, heart, inner life, mind, morality, spirit, virtue, vocation, warmth and wisdom4 suggest its presence.
Our ‘life’s Star’ has been likened to an acorn and a seed, linked with our destiny and our purpose, guided by a daimon, a genius or a guardian angel. The enduring heavens, full of images, also evoke these mysteries of soul, destiny, fate and calling. Astrology’s skyscape is and always has been a living museum for the stories of the soul.
Philosophically, soul has been a prime consideration. Over time soul has become annexed to religious doctrines, philosophical theories and New Age concepts, becoming entangled with notions of morality and spirituality, which exploit the concept of soul. Its commercialization institutionalizes its mysteries and abandons soul to a product. When randomly used, the word is no longer imaginative, but glib and ordinary. Or sometimes, as Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig expresses, the usage can be ‘embarrassing’.
Now ‘soul’ is a difficult term to use. Some psychologists avoid it, trying to create a psychology without soul. Others replace the religious-sounding ‘soul’ with the more neutral ‘psyche’. I am all for employing the word ‘soul’, yet, when used too often, it sounds pompous or sentimental. There is no way out: if you don’t use the word ‘soul’ you avoid the basic issue of psychology; use it too often and it becomes embarrassing.5
Similarly for astrologers, ‘there is no way out’. No matter how we conceive of it, soul is at the heart of astrological handiwork. It is always there, beyond the interpretations, the astrological analysis and theorizing. As a consulting astrologer I deeply felt I needed my own way of thinking about soul; therefore I followed some threads through time to help me feel comfortable with this question of soul.
From an ancient perspective, soul was the life energy that entered the body at birth and left at death. It was the essence of life, the breath, carried on the wind or borne lightly on the wings of a butterfly. The word ‘soul’ first enters western literature in the Homeric epic The Iliad around the 8th century bce. By the Classical period, three centuries later, soul had undergone a significant 18semantic amplification cultivated through the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics. Through subsequent periods soul remained a perpetual focal point of inquiry for all philosophers. The doctrines of subsequent practices like theosophy, anthroposophy and psychology continually redeveloped the understanding of soul. Similarly, astrology was not immune to the changing conceptualizations of soul.
In Greek, the closest word to the English soul is psyche; in Latin, anima.6 ‘Psyche’ characterizes a mix of indefinable ideas such as soul, mind and spirit derived from the Greek psychein, to breathe or blow, continuing the tradition of linking soul and breath.7Psyche, as an animating spirit or soul, entered the English language by the mid 17th century. By the early 20th century it was associated with the amalgam of thoughts, emotions and behaviours8 or psychology, which suggests the study of the human soul. A psychologist implies a student of the soul; hence to me astrologers, in the spirit of the word, are in essence psychologists.9 From antiquity to modernity, soul remained a fluid and indeterminable idea, best amplified and imagined like a symbol itself.
Psyche incarnated late into Greek myth. While important concepts, virtues, qualities and feelings like Justice, Peace, Health, Love and Retribution were personified as goddesses or heroines, Soul/Psyche was not embodied by the early Greeks, even though by the Classical period soul had become aligned with the image of a butterfly. In representations of her creation, Athena places a butterfly on the head of Prometheus as an image of ensouling the first man. I find it curious that the notion of soul, so important to poets and philosophers, does not anthropomorphize until later antiquity. In the 2nd century ce, Psyche became immortalized as the partner of Amor (Eros) through the pen of the Latin writer Apuleius in his unusual novel The Golden Ass. This pairing of Soul and Eros is not only a much loved story of a heroine overcoming the odds to find love, but is both allegory and myth.
Eros is Psyche’s soulmate. Unlike Psyche, Eros incarnated early in Greek myth, being one of the five primal deities that emerged out of Chaos, the gaping void and womb of creation. As a primal force of creation, Eros is many things. Essentially he humanizes the desire for life and union; no wonder Psyche and Eros are united, as the theme of life and soul is fundamental and universal. 19
A millennium before the old woman told the tale of Psyche and Eros in The Golden Ass, the Greeks had already developed a notion of psyche, evident in The Iliad. Psyche left the body on death and became a shade, the ghost-like mirror image or eidolon of the person while alive. The legacy from the Homeric period was that the soul could still be imagined after death. Thereafter the notion that psyche was the life essence of an individual and connected to life in all its forms became established. Soul needed to be lived. It was seen as separate to the body; hence Hippocratic medicine differentiated between the illnesses of the body and those of the soul.
In early epics, qualities like courage and passion were assigned to the soul. Playwrights from the 5th century bce referred to the soul’s desire, pleasures, emotions and virtues, aligning the soul with morality.10 Plato reshaped the ideas he inherited on soul, endowing it with wits and aligning it with an intelligible life form. His discourses characterize mental and psychological aspects belonging to the soul, not the body – soulful ideas that continue to echo through our modern discourses.
And so the philosophical enquiry throughout antiquity about whether the soul is separate from the body, whether it leaves, returns, even reincarnates, continued. During creative transitions, such as the Renaissance, the question of soul was philosophically renewed, finding an expression through other mediums including painting and prose. The Romantic period also brought the soulful dimension of purity, beauty and suffering to life through the imagery and words of poets like John Keats.
Soul-making
In a letter, John Keats reminded his brother of Psyche’s late incarnation: ‘the goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervour – and perhaps never thought of in the old religion: I am more orthodox than to let a heathen Goddess be so neglected.’11 As a Romantic poet, Keats could not neglect Psyche, not just because she was the embodiment of beauty, but because her suffering through her trials of life was ‘soul-making’.
Keats’s interest in Psyche’s anguish inspired him to reflect on the world as the ‘vale of soul-making’.12 A few days before he copied his Ode to Psyche in his journal, he wrote to his brother: 20
I say ‘Soul-making’… Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul. A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!13
His words resonated through me when I read them for the first time. Keats accentuates the poles of beauty and suffering as layers of the soul, but he also locates the incarnate and worldly experience as being where soul is crafted. Keats’s ‘World of Pains’ was the ‘vale of soul-making’, the place where a meaningful relationship between the suffering and trials of the body in the world and the beauty of the soul could be felt. Like Apuleius, Keats is struck by Psyche’s trials which were ‘soul-making’, an active process of working with soul. The ancients knew the act of ensouling, but now Keats gives us a new verb for it: ‘soul-making’.
The majority of my clients come for an astrological consultation to contextualize and understand their suffering; therefore I found Keats’s image of our worldly trials as the ‘vale of soul-making’ not only inspiring but enormously helpful. I applied this image to the horoscope, which for me is an imaginative map of this vale. Keats helped me see that active participation and work with the symbols of the horoscope is in itself soul-making. I recognized in myself, as well as many of my students and clients, how the images evoked by the horoscope offer ways to participate with our trials and pains, not from an analytic or causal perspective, but from a soulful one. The horoscope infuses the mundane world with meaning and connection through the medium of its symbols and images.
Reflecting on Soul
Inspired by Keats, James Hillman began his manuscript Re-Visioning Psychology with: ‘This book is about soul-making’.14 In his efforts to realign soul with psychology, Hillman introduced an archetypal psychology that addressed life as psychological in its authentic sense: that is, the study of the soul and its connection to life. Similarly, astrological intelligence can be aligned with the process of soul-making, as it orders and makes meaning of our worldly trials through the study of the starry heavens.
Hillman’s early reflections identified four aspects of the soul. For me his delineation of the soul as the unknown component which 21engenders meaning, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love and has a religious concern, is a wonderfully succinct beginning to reflect on soul and the horoscope. In Re-Visioning Psychology Hillman added ‘three necessary modifications’. He suggested that soul is the deepening of events into experiences, its religious concern derives from its special relation with death and that soul is the imaginative possibilities in our nature.15
Twenty-one years after the publication of Re-Visioning Psychology, Hillman published The Soul’s Code, a more contemporary contemplation on the essence of soul reaching back to Plato’s Myth of Er to draw inspiration for amplifying soul’s companions of calling, fate, daimon and necessity. Hillman used the ‘acorn theory’, which suggests that ‘each person bears a uniqueness that asks it be lived and that is already present before it can be lived’.16 Astrologers were already familiar with this thought, as it is central to the system of astrology, as well as the idea underpinning Dane Rudhyar’s conceptualization of a transpersonal astrology. The horoscope is a time-honoured tradition that has continuously embraced Hillman’s ‘acorn theory’. As the spokesperson for realigning soul with psychology, Hillman leaves a legacy of how contemporary astrologers might consider soul.
Hillman suggests that soul is not a concept but a symbol that resists definition in the same way as all symbols.17 Symbols convey meaning beyond the limit of any definition that we could give them. In the same way, soul defies a limited view or fixed definition and perhaps is better described in the ancient way as fluid, porous, flighty and permeable.18 Soul is a perspective, a way of seeing or thinking, a symbol rather than a fixed point of view or belief. And, like the horoscope, the soul offers us its riddles to be divined.
Ironically, what is so deeply personal, so interior to my being, so private and so soulful, cannot be said to be mine, as soul is not ruled by my personality nor managed by my will. While there are many traditions and ways to view the soul in relationship to body and even spirit, it is never aligned with self-image or ego. As the early Greeks suggested, soul is ethereal and relatively autonomous.19 Hence, for a consulting astrologer, some of the deepest and most profound work with our clients and our students remains private and sacred. Astrological expertise belongs to the soul, not the personality. 22
On Psyche’s Wings
Psyche is the root for many of our modern words which refer to this human fusion of thoughts, spirituality and desires. For instance, psychosomatic aligns body and soul, addressing the interface between the two; psychopathology refers to the suffering of the soul while psychosis proposes the idiosyncrasies of the soul. In a technological world that no longer has ways of thinking about soul, Psyche’s words become diagnostic and clinical, ailments to be fixed or medicated, rather than essential aspects of our nature.
Soul defies description, let alone translation. As psychoanalysis was establishing itself, seeking respect as a systematic and orderly discipline, it seemed necessary to distance itself from the mystifying and unstructured ‘soul’ which had become patented by religious institutions. The objective-sounding ‘psyche’ aroused less scepticism.
Psychoanalysts were keen to align their discipline with medicine and science rather than religion and faith; hence, delineating psychic disorder rather than soul trauma became more acceptable. Soul remained a symbol of the night while psyche became its daytime counterpart.
As an overarching symbol, soul is unbound by human prescription, defying categorization and conclusion. Carl Jung experienced the split between the established scientific and scholarly avenues with his own imaginative and instinctive experience of soul/psyche. Jung’s conversations with his soul, precognitive visions, automatic writing, inner voices and creative imagination gave form to many of his original psychological ideas.20 But in a world that valued literality and scientific proof, these sources could not be easily footnoted, nor acknowledged.
Astrologers too experience the pressure to be literal, predictive and certain; however, the horoscope invokes the symbolic and non-rational world where images, feelings, voices and sensations are the medium for clarity and insight. Practitioners are susceptible to falling into the gap between the factual and the imaginative, as astrological techniques are guides to a symbolic way of knowing. Without awareness, astrological techniques are championed as the reason for the successful judgement, rather than the key that unlocks the portal of imagination. This was why meditation on the soul became a valuable companion to my astrological practice, as 23it assisted me to understand another world not bound by physical, literal or rational parameters.
Acknowledging soul as a symbol that operates autonomously, outside the boundary of coherent thought and beyond scientific statutes, frees our capacity to see through the material to a soulful world where life has meaning and purpose. I feel that ensouling our everyday life is the essence of astrological work. To return to Hillman:
By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint towards things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens.21
Horoscope symbols awaken images previously unknown to us. Like a dream, these images arrive unbidden, not while asleep but while being reflective and engaged in contemplating the symbols of the horoscope. In its capacity to mediate and link the inner world with the outer one, the astrological images of the horoscope assist in ensouling our world by rendering the trials of life meaningful, connective and coherent.
Soul is reflective, subjective and inward, offering meaning to worldly experiences so I can be involved with them, not just experience them as random, fated and/or disconnected. For me, soul is the capacity to symbolize an event or experience so that it might be felt, embodied and remembered, reminding me of the authenticity of all feeling, the eternity of all attachments and the sacredness of all life. In contemporary thinking soul is the uplifting ‘X factor’ that brings a piece of music alive, renders a poem inspiring, enlivens a theatrical performance or makes work meaningful. Soul animates the mundane world through creativity and connection, encouraging participation in and with the world. Having this appreciation of soul brings the horoscope and its connections to the outer world to life.
Objects become ensouled when they deepen our experience of being alive, strike a profound chord, stir a mysterious yearning or hold memory. Possessions that have soul are not manufactured or mass-produced. They might be uniquely crafted or creatively nurtured; a treasured gift, invested with care and attention or 24an objet d’art which has an embedded integrity. Soul has been systematically separated from most contemporary creative endeavours through mass production and economic rationalism. Our plastic, fast-food, self-service, New Age, pre-fabricated, digital world has left us bereft; as the title of one of Carl Jung’s books suggests, we are modern man in search of a soul.22 Similarly, astrology can be disconnected from soul when theory, academic proficiency, technical superiority, prediction and literality obscure the heartfelt inquiry that the horoscope invites.
I think of soul as an attitude. Foremost it respects life in all its manifestations, inner and outer. By nature it is paradoxical; it is eternal yet it is known only in the present. Soul is both incarnate and ephemeral. It is awakened through the beauty and suffering of the outer world, yet is invisible in itself. It deepens the quality of life; it stimulates and enchants. It is sacred. Soul is mystery. Yet, ironically, openness to its ambiguity and symbols leads us to a resonant knowing. I bring this attitude to mind when preparing a horoscope, remembering that soul is found in the mystery and not in clarity.
At the end of a recent consultation a regular client expressed her gratitude for our sessions and how meaningful they had been to her. She had done this before but this time I felt moved to ask her what her experience was, what was of meaning to her. She spoke eloquently about feeling authenticated and understood, ‘as if my soul had been embraced by the cosmos’. She shared how important the night sky was to her as a child and that our consultations provided a space where she could reconnect to it in an imaginative way through the medium of the horoscope’s symbols. She felt seen and acknowledged by the starry heavens, which she described as a feeling of being cared for and embraced by forces much larger than herself.23 Jean is both an imaginative and practical individual, and like many she values the imaginative art of astrology, as its symbolic process inspires a soulful reconnection to the night sky. Like many others, Jean cannot explain through facts or evidence what she values about our appointments; it is through the heart that she demonstrates her appreciation.
Jean’s imagination is the vital aspect of the process that allows her to engage with the horoscope. Through her imaginative faculties and willingness to participate with the astrological symbols, a door opens up onto the landscape of her soul.
– 0 –
IMAGINATION
So hopeless is the world without;
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,
And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou, and I, and Liberty,
Have undisputed sovereignty.
What matters it, that, all around,
Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie,
If but within our bosom’s bound
We hold a bright, untroubled sky,
Warm with ten thousand mingled rays
Of suns that know no winter days?24
Emily Jane Brontë, ‘To Imagination’
Imagination is often perceived as a whimsical pastime or an empty notion, belittled as ‘fanciful’ or dismissed quickly with a turn of phrase like ‘my imagination is playing tricks on me’. To Emily Brontë, imagination was her daimon, her guide to a private world she particularly valued, uncontaminated by pollutants from the outer world. Imagination allowed her to see through to a more soulful realm, an inner site canopied under an ‘untroubled sky’. This other world, by whatever names we might call it, has always been part of the human experience, never questioned by mystics, poets, artists or children.
