Archetypal Astrology
Definition
Archetypal astrology is a contemporary modern Western school developed mainly by Richard Tarnas in Cosmos and Psyche (2006). It reads the planets as universal archetypal principles — deep, recurring patterns of meaning — that show up at the same time in personal psychology, cultural movements, and historical events. It builds on Dane Rudhyar's humanistic foundation and folds in Carl Jung's archetypal theory and James Hillman's archetypal psychology, backed by wide-ranging studies that correlate planetary cycles with history.
In Tradition
Among modern Western psychological-astrology lineages, archetypal astrology is the school that most openly carries humanistic chart reading out into history and culture. The planetary archetypes are held to be psychological, mythological, and historical principles all at once — Uranus as Promethean liberation, Neptune as dissolution and transcendence, Pluto as evolutionary intensity — and the cycles of the outer planets are read as correlating with collective trends as well as with individual psychological growth.
In Practice
Working with one person, an archetypal astrologer reads the chart as a personal expression of the same archetypal principles animating the wider cultural moment, paying close attention to outer-planet placements, transits, and the phases of long life-cycles. Working at the collective scale, they correlate world-transits — pairings such as Uranus-Pluto, Saturn-Pluto, and Jupiter-Uranus — with historical periods, cultural movements, and creative output, drawing on both individual case studies and broad historical surveys. Throughout, the emphasis falls on meaning, pattern recognition, and the symbolic reading of events rather than on literal prediction.
Historical Origin
Richard Tarnas published Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View (2006), the school's canonical text. Its antecedents include Dane Rudhyar's humanistic-archetypal framing in The Astrology of Personality (1936), the Jungian-archetypal lineage built up at the Centre for Psychological Astrology by Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas (London, 1980s onward), and James Hillman's archetypal psychology in Re-Visioning Psychology (1975).
Further Reading
- Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View
- Dane Rudhyar, The Astrology of Personality
- Liz Greene, The Astrology of Fate