Metaphysics of Astrology & Jung
The philosophy of astrology is my happy place.
Metaphysics of Astrology and Jung
I am insatiably interested in the philosophy of astrology. How is it so accurate in such a specific way? Reading about the philosophy or metaphysics of astrology helps me the way reading a primary text does. Just as it’s much different to read a secondary text about Timaeus than to read the text itself, reading about the WHY of astrology helps me come to my own conclusions instead of taking things for face value and often helps me form my own ideas about why through resonance. I know the cosmos and its parts are one expression of divine intelligence and love but still, there are areas of inquiry that beg a deeper acknowledgment. Metaphysics of Astrology by Ivan Antic helped me understand a few pieces as well as some conclusions about astrology I hadn’t considered before. I spend a LOT of my time considering astrology so when I find a book that gives me something brand new, I have to share.
Antic writes, “Because of the unity of nature, every moment is shaped by the whole.” While I know this on an intellectual level, feeling into it is another experience altogether and is ripe for so many personal insights. It’s also a potent description of the ascendant. He discusses the movement of the planets as energy in much the same way that matter is ultimately energy at the subatomic level. He writes that the intersection of space and time is spherical—one is dependent on the other. In this way, he makes some leaps I’d like to further explore but he comes to the conclusion that the movements of planets determine actual space. The planets as timekeepers is not a new idea but the why is very interesting. He writes that astrological houses are the orientation we have in space-time and that the natal chart is a destiny we must uncondition ourselves from in order to find our Self.
In some places, I wonder if the translator didn’t do enough editing as the material is dense to begin with and some of the grammar wasn’t adding up but, often, he references divine consciousness and soul and Self in the same way. The Jungian Self is then a reconnecting with the ultimate consciousness we were born from. Uniting with this wholeness, he says, liberates us from all of the conditioning we experience as seen in our natal charts. He favors consciously acting in the best interest of our soul rather than the impulses and natural predispositions in our natal placements.
“The stronger the personal consciousness is, the more favorable the destiny. Consciousness is the interaction between soul and nature.”
Where Jungian astrology focuses on the natal chart as a map to the Self, Antic speaks on the natal chart as all that must be shed to get to the core of the consciousness of Self. While they sound different at first, essentially, they are on in the same. Resolving the tension of squares, oppositions, and conjunctions while using trines and sextiles as strengths in order to relieve oneself of one-sidedness is decidedly Jungian and if we look at the individuated person, in theory, they wouldn’t be their chart. Their chart would be what they were naturally predisposed toward, like the cognitive functions we favor, while also speaking of the main trials of life that bestow consciousness if held and revered long enough to birth the Self. So, in this sense, Antic’s work isn’t in opposition to Jung’s astrology. In Jungian astrology, we may think of the chart as the map to the Self but in Antic’s conceptual framework, it’s the map to the conditioning one must be aware of so as to move past it to the Self.
In some ways, it reminds me of the difference between Jungian typology and the MBTI (which Jung outright did not support). Jung favored this system as a way to recognize our own unique way of being one-sided. It was devised as a starting point. MBTI favors being typed as a way to describe oneself, indefinitely. You hear it often when people excuse one-sided behavior by saying, “That’s cause I’m an XXXX and that’s how we’re wired.”
Also, a natal chart shows what’s most natural and what traits are supported through experiences, but just like no two INFJs or INFPs are alike, no two Capricorns or Scorpios are alike. Each has or hasn’t done the work of bringing to light the parts of their chart and cognitive functions which they, at one point, project. Some are comfortable projecting their 7th house, the missing elements in their chart and their last 5 functions, for example. Others do work around bringing these parts of themselves to their own light.
Antic talks a lot about the sun as the Self just as Jungian astrology does. In projecting any part of our chart--all twelve signs--we give away part of the process of becoming whole in favor of experiencing the harder to reach parts of ourselves through others. In this way, especially romantic relationships bear the burden of our thwarted individuation which is a heat that such a partnership isn’t built to hold. Bringing to light the parts of our chart that are unconscious to us is the same as freeing us from using relationships as placeholders for failed individuation and thus, failed partnerships, too. The motive for relationship is then to relate to the other as their own person instead of someone that carries a part of our personality for us to experience.
Individuating is a lifelong journey and supports a fuller expression of a loving romantic relationship. It is a shame that modern society has talked so many into believing having a self is selfish. If you need guidance on applying Jungian astrology and the metaphysics of astrology to your own chart, book a reading with me here.
Antic also dives deep into the meaning of each sign in a soul’s evolution and how they interact with the desire to become individuated.
“Zodiac signs best describe the evolution of the maturing of consciousness…This starts in Aries where everything spontaneously aspired to manifest itself. The next is expressed through an aspiration for the first concrete material shaping in Taurus. The first mental experiencing takes place in Gemini and the emotional in Cancer. After, the ego is formed, the awareness of oneself based solely on the sensory experiences and personal feelings in Leo.”
If you look at the parts of your chart that contain these signs, you can start to see the progression from one house to the next, if you’re an Aries rising or not. For example, Aries is my 6th house of work, routine and health. I am at my best when I am physically initiating tasks and getting out a sufficient amount of physical energy. When I don’t do this, I don’t feel I’ve manifested myself for the day and the evening suffers. Next comes the 7th in Taurus and reflects a secondary daily need to create something physical. In the 8th is Gemini, and if I don’t write to the depths every day, I lose track of how I feel. Then there is Cancer which is my 9th house of higher learning. If I’m not learning every day, I am not emotionally satisfied. Last, my 10th in Leo. If I can’t shine a light on all of the above in some way, I feel I’ve lost touch with the day.
After reading Antic’s description, I began to see that there is a real need to get in touch with the first five signs in a way that feels practical but also touches on the deeper meaning of what it is to be human. I normally look to my first house for Aries themes as that’s its general correlate and I don’t have any placements in the 6th house but, that doesn’t mean the house is empty. It’s got the spark of initiation.
He continues, “Once aspirations of this kind reach a point and acquires sufficient experiences, they start to be critically processed and analyzed in Virgo. This analysis gets its harmonious outcome in Libra, becoming whole on the ego level in relationship. When this aspiration matures, a need for something wider and deeper appears: the need to be whole with the universal in the sign of Scorpio. Evolution reaches its turning point here as it reaches its most powerful drive which, if consciously prevailed by man’s turning toward spiritual values, may be used as fuel to achieve higher dimensions of the otherworldly and spiritual. The experience of beingness touches rock bottom here, thus enabling itself to move upward.”
Well, okay. That last line got me in my trauma cause there seems to be a plethora of rock bottoms for Scorpios. The idea of one “bottom” is laughable to any Scorpio willing to talk about how many of those suckers they’ve seen. It’s more of a way of life. I imagine a videogame where Mario’s jumping from one rock bottom to the next, at times, leaping into the sky and landing on some stone shelf for a moment of reprieve.
He goes on to further hurt my feelings, “It all comes to a point of disintegration so the energy is transformed into the inner dimensions, and in the signs that follow, invisible, spiritual phenomena and values prevail. In Scorpio, the soul attains the full spectrum of material and sensory observable manifestations of life (Scorpio is therefore the most aware of them) and sets in motion toward the transcendence of those. If the crisis of this transformation is well executed, the person will become a true devotee of higher dimensions. If he fails, he’ll devote his life to demonism which only superficially provides the illusion of overcoming materiality, whereas the material illusion could be substituted for the astral one.”
Higher dimensions or demonism, huh. The stakes seem a bit LOUD. So, dear readers, seems like Antic says that we are less phased by the phases of transformation when we are devoted to something that isn’t measurable. I mean, there is a time and place for everything, amirite? Also, this doesn’t go for Scorpios alone. Everyone has Pluto and Scorpio in their chart.
Where can you transcend and identify with love so each of your transformations is seen from a level of awareness that is wholly accepting because it doesn’t identify with that which is being changed? For me, it’s the first house of self so I’ll have to stare into the void about this for a while before having an answer.
Hint: he defines soul consciousness/divine consciousness/self as… love.
“In Sagittarius, spiritual experiences are united for the first time, the systemization of all the knowledge often by means of philosophy or religion. Beingness for the first time transforms from the instinctive to the spiritual and human.”
“Capricorn represents the maximum concentration of cognition and the experience of beingness, which resembles its season, in which all preceding forms have been reduced to their essence, the seed frozen in the ground.”
I found this to be such an insightful description of Capricorn. I’ve met folks born under this sign who seem to have a solid understanding of so much depth but you’d only know it if you asked and asked and also did a bit of digging. Capricorn achieves in the physical realm in order to calmly set forth into the deeper dimensions. Also, these signs are speaking to the archetypes and not necessarily the folks who were born under their energy. There are many ways to express a sign and if you’ve met more than a few of any sign, you know this truth. I’ve met the party Sag and the mentor Sag, the demon Scorpio and the phoenix. I’ve even met them in the same person.
Some Capricorns don’t reach the point of letting go of the material in which case the author says, Aquarius sets itself free from the forms Capricorn tends to finalize and hold onto by distributing knowledge on an intellectual level. As these are both Saturn ruled signs, it reminds me that there are two phases to wisdom—attaining and sharing. “In the final phase, universal becomes intrinsic, making Pisces susceptible to all influences to the degree that it often loses itself in them. If this disintegration doesn’t lead to knowing the Self, the soul, then a new cycle begins.”
Antic describes that Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, and Libra can find the path to individuation through submission which he defines as “experiencing various aspects of natural urges, which suit them for reaching awareness” in the context that everything is the reflection of divine wholeness so can be used for the purpose of self-knowing.
Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Aquarius can find the path based on self-knowledge based on untying attachments to conditioning from family, culture, etc. Antic says, “find authenticity in the spiritual conquest of the unconscious elements.”
I’m left with a lot to further integrate and process but there were so many gems in such a short book despite some leaps and issues with editing. It’s a book I’m sure I’ll visit again.
If you read the book closely and with emotional receptivity, you may start to get a weird feeling that the consciousness/Self he talks about is one that you once knew well. It was the sun in and of a brief moment in childhood and for most, somehow got lost along the way. If you’ve read this far, I’d say that your inner child is perhaps readying you to be in a more receptive state to your soul. If you pull tarot cards, remember The Sun is a child. Antic and I agree for certain on one thing if not many—such a state of being is creator consciousness and frees you and I from seeing ourselves through the lens of years of conditioning which often lead away from our truest authenticity—our Self.
love,
Nairy
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So much to process and ponder here, wow. <3