The Inner Cosmos Meets the Outer Cosmos

Jung began to examine astrology as early as 1911, when he mentioned his inquiries in a letter to Freud. That interest gradually developed into a major focus of investigation, and in his later years Jung devoted himself with considerable passion to astrological research. “Astrology,” he stated, “represents the sum of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity.” Insights from these studies influenced many of his most significant theoretical formulations in the final, extraordinarily fruitful phase of his life’s work, including archetypal theory, synchronicity, and the philosophy of history. Since his death, reports from his family and others close to him revealed that in his last decades Jung came to employ the analysis of birth charts and transits as a regular and integral aspect of his clinical work with patients.

In this evening’s lecture, Richard and Becca Tarnas will discuss the transformation of 20th-century astrology under the impact of Jung’s work, the importance of archetypes and the concept of synchronicity to astrological understanding, and the larger implications of evidence for the systematic correlation of planetary movements with the archetypal dynamics of the human psyche. They will also present a concise, nuanced description of each of the great archetypal principles associated with the Sun, Moon, and planets, and the extraordinary mutual enrichment that depth psychology and archetypal astrology provide for each other.