Astrology and Inner Experience

My dawning recognition in adolescence that there is an inner world drew me to psychology. In my early twenties -- when I became aware of altered states of consciousness and spiritual realities -- I was drawn to Jung, tarot and astrology. However, I was simultaneously coming out of a rigorous training in the scientific method in graduate school, in which I was instilled with the belief that only observable and measurable phenomena are real.

In astrology, planetary cycles correspond both with observable phenomena and inner subjective experience. When something happens in your environment, it is fairly easy to correlate that event with transits and progressions if you can see its symbolic, archetypal meaning. For example, your boyfriend breaks up with you when transiting Saturn opposes your natal Venus.

But what happens when you try to categorize your subjective experience, your emotions? Many people are simply not very attuned to their inner world -- not in touch with their feelings -- and those of us who are aware of our emotions and fantasies may have difficulty associating our feelings and mental images with a placeholder: that is, some external event or transitional state (moving, changing jobs, starting or ending a relationship) that logically explains or justifies our feelings.

Divination places a structure around our subjective experience. If you do a Tarot reading or study your astrological transits, you are essentially looking for an archetype -- be it a Major Arcana card or an outer planet transit or something else -- that "nails" that hard-to-articulate feeling you have inside. The "ah hah!" experience re-affirms our belief in divination -- it offers a sense of order to our lives. It does not matter if other people don't believe in archetypal realities -- the meaning we derive from these forms of divination is proof enough that these archetypes exist.

Tag: astrology