Astropsychology

Psychological Astrology, Astrological Psychology or Astropsychology is a recent product of the cross-fertilisation of the fields of astrology with depth psychology, humanistic psychology, and transpersonal psychology. It uses the horoscope and the archetypes of astrology to inform the psychological understanding of an individual's psyche.

It owes its origins to the writings of Carl Jung in the 1950s. Jung once said "astrology represents the summation of the psychological knowledge of antiquity" (1962). He went on to synthesize his own Analytical psychology theories with those of Western astrology.

Other significant pioneers include Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas who in 1983 founded the Centre for Psychological Astrology. Bruno Huber & Louise Huber also developed their own method of astrological psychology, referred to as the Huber Method which links to Roberto Assagioli's work with psychosynthesis.

When Carl Jung was investigating the symbolic meaning of dreams; he would commonly come across mythical figures that have been passed down to us from our ancestors.He then noticed a correlation in the images pictured in ones dreams to the gods that were attached to heavenly figures mapped out in the stars. From this the g concluded that the heavenly figures in astrology come from images we make in our minds. Jung felt that it was these mental images that brought about astrology. He did believe that astrology could teach us about the human mind but on a general level. Several astrologers as well as psychologists followed up on his claims and found that from horoscopes they could discover the structure of their character. From this they assumed that a person’s mental difficulty could be found through the horoscope. This was the start of astrology making its way and influencing some psychological tactics. Psychological astrology does not directly believe that a persons everyday life is dictated by the position of the stars. It just shows the horoscope as a mere tool to help identify a person’s attributes. For example a psychological astrologer might use a horoscope method to see if the individual possesses specialized abilities based on their mindset.

Proof of this pseudo-science is very difficult. Astrologers working in a psycho-diagnostic framework rely upon personal experience to justify why psychological astrology can provide meaningful information about a persons character. The external influences on a person can cause them to feel as if the horoscope is accurately portraying their mental issues. According to Riemann, “The dispositions visible in the horoscope are then covered up and their unfolding is blocked by external influences. The horoscope then helps in once again uncovering the buried dispositions.” It is because of this reliance on personal experience and the likelihood of external influences, that scientific evidence would show that the diagnosis of a psychological issue most likely couldn’t be made by a horoscope, causing psychological astrology not to be considered a science. However, within the psychological world of study it is found to work with certain empirical and theoretical methods. In psychology’s past there have been experiences in which methods were applied to patients that called for horoscopes being used as a diagnostic for showing their mental characteristics. These experiences haven’t been able to show any testable empirical evidence that it was in fact the horoscope that found out the mental characteristics of a person and that that was in fact an actual characteristic of that person. This is also another cause for the lack of scientific recognition of the pseudo-science.

Even if there was empirical evidence of psychological astrology actually working, that would indicate a correlation between heavenly figures in the sky and a person's predispositions at birth. While not conflicting with already accepted scientific methods that define and discover a person’s mental characteristics, studies have been unable to verify such things as intangible as personality traits on a quantifiable level acceptable to the scientific community. Jung believed that there are reasons to suspect that heavenly bodies actually effect a person's development at birth, and that the correlation is acausal and not actually influenced by the planets and stars themselves.[1] He went on to further state his reasons for believing the mindset of a person involved in supposedly aucausal phenomena was crucial in whether the correlation even existed. Psychological astrology is then again brought back to connections through personal experience. It is because of this innate inability a solid empirical form of evidence that based on current scientific standards.

Using Occam's Razor from Carey, rival explanations can be found about why the horoscope may seem to accurately identify the mental characteristics of an individual, that are more generally accepted than that of an astrological explanation. When a person is mentally evaluated by a psychological astrologer and is told their prediction of their mental characteristics they will begin to associate things they do with what the astrologer is saying, which will give the perception that they are accurately portraying their attributes. A study done by Shawn Carlson took astrological charts that were prepared for 83 subjects, based on natal data from his data the results showed that, "Each subject was given three charts: one chart based on their own natal data, and two charts derived from natal data of other people. Each subject was asked to identify the chart that most correctly described him or her. In only 28 of the 83 cases, the subject chose their own chart. This is the exact success rate expected for random chance. The astrologers predicted that the subjects would select their own chart more that 50% of the time." In order to balance any bias against astrology it is worth looking at the recent book, 'Cosmos and Psyche, Intimations of a New World View,' by respected cultural historian, philosopher, and psychologist Richard Tarnas, which offers new evidence in support of the astrological worldview.

Comments (0) 27.04.2009. 03:51

The Sun and The Allegory of the Cave

Suppose a prisoner is released and compelled to stand up and turn around. His eyes will be blinded by the firelight, and the shapes passing will appear less real than their shadows.Similarly, if he is dragged up out of the cave into the sunlight, his eyes will be so blinded that he will not be able to see anything.

At first, he will be able to see darker shapes such as shadows and, only later, brighter and brighter objects. The last object he would be able to see is The Sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as that object which provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen (The Republic bk. VII, 516b-c; trans. Paul Shorey).

This part of the allegory, incidentally, closely matches Plato's metaphor of the sun which occurs near the end of The Republic, Book VI.

Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would no doubt want to return to the cave to free "his fellow bondsmen". The problem, however, lies in the other prisoners' not wanting to be freed: descending back into the cave would require that the freed prisoner's eyes adjust again, and for a time, he would be one of the identifying shapes on the wall. This would make his fellow prisoners murderous toward anyone who attempted to free them.

Plato's The Allegory of the Cave tells us lot of thing!!!If prisoners doesnt want to know the meaning of the sun, then how could We ( Astrologers )explain prisoners to understand a Horoscope chart or Astrology.

Writen by Can Milar

The Allegory of the Cave

The Matrix and the Cave

The Architect's Speech

Agent Smith - Why do you persist?

Poetry by RUMI - Those who don't Feel This Love

Comments (2) 17.05.2008. 05:02

THE GATE OF LIFE AND DEATH

Thus the Zodiac and the planets are as a book in which we may read the history of Humanity during past ages, and they also give a key to the future which is in store for us.

In the famous Zodiac in the Temple of Denderah, Cancer is not pictured as we have it in modern days. There it is a beetle, a scarab. This was the emblem of the soul, and Cancer has always been known in ancient times, as well as among modern mystics, to be the sphere of the soul, THE GATE OF LIFE in the Zodiac whence the spirits coming into rebirth, enter our sub-lunary conditions.

It is therefore aptly ruled by the Moon which is the planet of fecundation, and it is noteworthy that we find Capricorn, which is its opposite, ruled by Saturn the PLANET OF DEATH AND CHAOS, who is mystically depicted as "the reaper with his scythe and hour glass in hand." These two opposite signs are therefore turning points in the soul's career.

Cancer and Capricorn respectively mark the highest ascent of the Sun into the Northern Hemisphere, and its lowest descent into the South. We observe that during the summer when the Sun is in the sphere of Cancer and allied signs, fecundation and growth are the order of the day.

But when the Sun is in the South, in Capricorn, we have winter, when nature is dead. The fruits of the summer are then consumed and assimilated by us.

As a circle dance of the Sun among the twelve signs determines the seasons of the year WHEN DIRECT, causing the germination of myriads of seeds cast in the earth, also the mating of the fauna, which then makes the world alive with the sights and sounds of manifested life, and at another time leaves the world dumb, dull and drear in winter's gloom, under the sway of Saturn, so by the slower backward movement, known as the PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOX, does it produce the great changes which we know as Evolution.

In fact, this precessional measure of the sun marks the birth and death of races, nations and their religions, for the pictorial Zodiac is a symbolical presentation of our past, present and future development.

Comments (1) 09.03.2008. 11:35

EVOLUTION AS SHOWN IN THE ZODIAC

It is a matter of common knowledge among mystics that the evolutionary career of mankind is indissolubly bound up with the divine hierarchies who rule the planets and the signs of the Zodiac, and that passage of the Sun and the planets through the twelve signs of the Zodiac, marks man's progress in time and in space. Therefore it is not to be wondered at, that in the course of their investigations into the spiritual development of mankind, the writers have also encountered much that deals with the Zodiac which is the boundary of our evolutionary sphere at the present time.

So much has been perceived in THE MEMORY OF NATURE that sheds light upon obscure passages of the Bible, that notes have been made from time to time of different points, but how to collect and collage these dissociated writings into a united whole, has been a great problem for a long time.

Even now, the writers know and feel that what they are bringing forth is only a very, very weak attempt to set before the students that great body of facts which have come to them through the memory of nature. They feel, however, that this will give a new and more profound meaning to the old symbols, and that by passing on what has been found they put themselves in line to receive more light.

Concerning the future evolution of planets; the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception teaches, that "when the beings upon the planet have evolved to a sufficient degree, the planet becomes a Sun, the fixed center of the Solar System. When the beings there have evolved to a still greater degree, and consequently it has reached its maximum of brilliancy, it breaks up into a Zodiac and becomes, so to speak, the womb of a new Solar System.

Thus the Great hosts of Divine beings who, until then, were confined upon that Sun gain freedom of actions upon a great number of stars whence they can affect, in different ways, the system which grows up within their sphere of influence. The planets or many-bearing worlds within the Zodiac are constantly being worked upon by these forces but in various ways according to the stage they have reached in evolution.

Our Sun could not have become a sun until it set out from itself all the beings who were not sufficiently evolved to endure the high rate of vibration and the great luminosity of the beings who were qualified for that evolution. All the beings upon the different planets would have been consumed had they remained in the Sun. This visible Sun, however, though it is a place of evolution for beings vastly above man, is not by any means, the Father of other planets, as material science supposes. On the contrary, it is itself an emanation fron THE CENTRAL SUN, which is the invisible source of all that IS in our solar system."

"Our visible Sun is but the mirror in which are reflected the Rays of energy from the Spiritual Sun, the real Sun is as invisible as the REAL man."

From this teaching it is apparent that the great spiritual hierarchies which are now guiding our evolution, have had their training for this path in previous schemes of manifestation, also that what THEY are now doing, WE shall some day do FOR OTHERS.

Already the foremost among our race are treading the path of initiation, and have thereby advanced into stages, far beyond the general status of our present humanity. It has been learned that those who have gone through the Mercurial School of the lesser Mysteries, and have graduated from the School of the Greater Mysteries are now preparing human evolution for the Jupiter Period. They have entered the planet Jupiter, by way of one of the Moons, which serves as a stepping stone.

Others there are, unfortunately, who have gone the other way. We read in the Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, that even as the whole population of the earth was at one time expelled from the present Sun because of their inability to keep up with the vibrations of the beings thereon, thus hindering them and being hindered themselves, so also it becomes necessary in the Lemurian Epoch, to expel a number of the stragglers from earth.

Thus the Moon was cast out into space to revolve as a Satellite around our present planet. Those unfortunates are gradually degenerating and the time will come when they will all go to the planet Saturn, which is the door to Chaos. Thence they will be expelled to inter-planetary space to await the time when, in a new system, there will be a favorable condition for their further evolution.

Comments (0) 09.03.2008. 10:51