One World - Cosmology and Divination

COSMOLOGY FOR MODERN TIME
- Recreating the One World -
Maggie Hyde
In this study, I consider the interweaving of cosmological perception with
philosophical and spiritual understanding, showing how changes in our perception
of the cosmos reflect and are reflected in changes in the conception of reality
and in attitudes to the sacred. This is demonstrated by contrasting the Platonic
and medieval Christian-Platonic cosmos of our western tradition with post-
enlightenment cosmology.
I go on to consider the way in which cosmological symbolism may bridge the
subject-object split and recreate for the modern age a sense of the ‘One World’
characteristic of the cosmological understanding of antiquity.
This possibility is illustrated in the final part of the study in two modes of symbol
which have been woven together to illustrate the common theme. The first employs
the conventional symbolism of astrology and the second refers to the poetry of
William Blake. This develops the discussion on the symbolism of the Sun given in
The Boat of a Million Years and takes account of the curious story of the modern
planet, Pluto, including the timely issues raised by its recent demotion to dwarf
planet status.
The dialogue of Blake’s poetry and astrological symbolism requires a positioning
within a pre-enlightenment attitude and methodology, and this hermeneutic move
demands a leap of imagination, or at least a generosity of interpretation, on the part
of the reader.
Hyde, (2005).

Cosmology & Reality
On 24 August 2006, at the International Astronomical Union conference in Prague,
new guidelines were adopted for the solar system which changed the status of
Pluto. Since its orbit periodically intersects with that of its neighbour, Neptune,
Pluto cannot be considered to hold a regular orbit around the Sun in the manner of
the major planets. Pluto is also tiny and is now realised to be just one of numerous
small bodies orbiting in the far-flung Kuiper Belt. On these counts, Pluto was
declared to be the prototype of a newly designated category of ‘dwarf’ planet.
Professor Iwan Williams, chair of the panel charged with proposing a redefinition
of the term ‘planet’, commented:
I have a slight tear in my eye today, yes; but at the end of the day
we have to describe the Solar System as it really is, not as we would
like it to be. 2
His remark constellates a central theme of this paper, the way in which the
perception of the nature of the cosmos is integral with our conception of reality.
There is no question that for Williams, as an astronomer, reality is defined by
physical science, and not by any subjective projection or imaginative notion of the
solar system, nor by any human participation in it. Implicit in the attitude of the
modern astronomer is the divide between the observing subject and the observed
object. This gives rise to a cosmos which is infinite and objective, one which has no
intrinsic bearing on the question of meaning, since according to Williams, meaning
is derived from human interpretation and therefore human participation. An
explanation of the cosmos in terms of human meaning may appeal to our emotions,
but it is not physically real and therefore cannot be objectively true. It is at best a
poetic ideal, a slight tear in the eye.
In this equation of scientific truth with reality, any other understanding of the
cosmos is dismissed as merely subjective, ‘as we would like it to be’, and therefore
wrong. However, another cosmos did once exist, and it, too, was known by its
denizens to be real, and true.
2 BBC News 24 August 2006; http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-l/hi/dci/tech/5282440.stm
2

The One World
It is characteristic of ancient cosmologies to embody a creation myth that addresses
the relationships of sky and earth, gods and men. The defining cosmology in our
tradition is recorded in the Timaeus, a late work of Plato which had enormous
influence in classical and medieval thought. It describes how the cosmos was
created by a divine intelligence, the demiurge, who formed it as a sphere, infused
with soul:
And in the midst thereof he set a soul and extended it throughout the
whole, and also wrapped its body round with soul on the outside;
and so he established one world alone, round and revolving in a
circle, solitary but able by virtue of its excellence to keep itself
company, needing no other acquaintance or friend but sufficient unto
itself.
This ‘one world alone’ is the World Soul, the Anima Mundi. It is also our visible
celestial sphere, so that each factor in it is seen not only in what modern thinking
would describe as astronomical terms, but also in metaphysical terms. In the
ancient concept there is no divide between astronomy and metaphysics. The
meaning of the Greek word kosmos is ‘order’, which is not a purely physical
kosmos, but is an “ontotheological synthesis”, 4 encompassing moral, aesthetic
and sacred values. Cosmological and ontological descriptions in the Timaeus are
inseparably intertwined:
the composition of the world-soul from Existence, Sameness and
Difference enables it to know unchangeably real objects and to hold
true beliefs about changing things in the realm of becoming. 5
This goes entirely beyond observations of later speculative philosophy. The great
circle of the equator is Sameness, the ecliptic is Difference and their movement is
the expression of the World Soul. Since man is made of the same soul-stuff as the
World Soul, the rotation of the celestial sphere is the self-same movement of man’s
intelligence:
Plato, The Timaeus, [ 4B], Warrington p.25, Jowett p.2 8.
4 Dupré, p. 7- 8.
5 Plato, Warrington commentary, p.29.

when reason, I say, is hovering around the sensible world and when
the circle of the DIVERSE also moving truly imparts the intimations
of sense to the whole soul, then arise opinions and beliefs sure and
certain. But when reason is concerned with the rational, and the
circle of the SAME moving smoothly declares it, then intelligence
and knowledge are necessarily achieved. 6
Man’s reason and the movement of the celestial sphere are integral and co-
emergent. Whenever there is movement in the celestial sphere, there is movement
in man’s soul, and the movement of soul is movement in the sphere. The first
movement of divine intelligence, later known in Aristotelian cosmology as the
Primum Mobile, sets the whole in motion by turning the celestial sphere on its
polar axis. In its one turn, the world, soul and man are turned into One, which is the
original meaning of the word universe, and this is the movement of man’s own true
being. As it rotates, the stars and planetary motions create time as the expression
of divine purpose, and time itself becomes the “moving image of eternity”. 7 The
divine influence is transferred through the planetary spheres to the sublunary world,
literally the world below the Moon. This realm of the physical world, in which
our sense perception is bound, is transient and unreal, one which “is always in
a process of becoming and perishing and never really is” 8 , in contrast to the real
and eternal forms of the divine intelligence which “has no becoming”. In the One
World,
reality was seen as grounded in the ineffable, in God, in the One, in
the Absolute, in the eternally Real, in the uncreated, the infinite, the
transcendent. 9
In comparison to this ground of the Real, the world and its concerns are transitory,
that through which the Real shows itself, so that, for the ancients:
The created order is the appearance, transitory in nature, and the
ineffable the truly real. 0
6 Plato [ 7C], Jowett p.24 , Warrington, p. 0.
7 Plato, [ 7D], Warrington p. 0, Jowett p.24 .
8 Plato [28A], Jowett p.2 4.
9 Milne, p.2.
0 Milne, p.2.
4

This Platonic One World ontotheological cosmos prevailed as reality from the
classical era through to the medieval period. Although aspects of its physical
construction were subject to debate, and Plato’s revelation can be expressed in
different metaphysical and theological modes, its foundation in truth was not in
question. The cosmos was ordered, finite and hierarchical and the universe in its
totality was endowed with conscious intelligence and purpose. Man’s existence in
the scheme of things therefore had purpose, and although in earthly life the eternal
Forms may be only dimly recollected, the soul remembered them and through
man’s intellectual and spiritual activity, he sought to be reunited with the cosmos
and its divine intelligence.
Medieval Christendom and Islam took up this understanding, with the emphasis
that the One World was created and continuously tended by an omnipotent God.
The divine purpose could not be fully apprehended by man without the aid of
revelation; however, the celestial harmony of the spheres indicated God’s will
through the correspondence of the planetary hierarchies with all things on earth in
a cosmic sympathy. This confirmed the cosmic order, the macrocosm-microcosm
of the hermetists, ‘as above, so below’. The medieval alchemists named this Unus
Mundus, 2 the unifying ground of man and God, and this same One World was
also the inspiration of Renaissance thought, and especially the neo-Platonism of
Marsilio Ficino.
The gradual collapse of this classical cosmos frames the narrative of western
thought, with Copernicus ( 47 - 54 ) and Galileo ( 564 - 642) being the prima
mobilia who set in motion the change in our understanding of the heavens. It is
often assumed that the change from a geocentric to a heliocentric perspective is
central to the demise of the One World but this is at best only a partial explanation.
The ontotheological interpretation of the cosmos can readily adopt heliocentricity,
as in the work of Kepler, who saw the laws of planetary motion as embodying
divine order and believed that the forms of the Pythagorean and Platonic solids are
inscribed in the planetary orbits around the Sun. However, the demonstration of
heliocentricity shook the old certainties of the medieval cosmos and in this sense
broke up the soil for new growth to take root. More fundamental, however, is the
For the interpretation of the One World in Sufi mysticism, see Thomas Cheetham.
2 Jung, CW 4, para 660.
Kepler, Book V.
5

einterpretation of the cosmos as an extended material entity. When the divine
celestial sphere gave way to the physical solar system, it was not only man’s place
in the cosmos that was shattered, it was God’s.
With the ideas of Newton, Descartes and Bacon, a contrast began to gain ground
between a medieval Christian Creator God and a modern, mechanistic cosmos. 4
The enlightenment philosophers from Locke to Kant were part of a continuing
process in which modern man began to assert his separation from the cosmos. The
Copernican Revolution, the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution were a
deadly cocktail for the One World that culminated symbolically in the discovery
of another planet, Uranus. This was in 78 , only eight years before the French
Revolution destroyed a great European monarchy, and equally close on the heels
of the American Revolution, a coincidence of timing which has been recognised by
symbolists ever since. In the medieval theory of correspondences, as God’s earthly
ruler through Divine Right, the king corresponds with the Sun, so symbolically
his loss dethrones the divine creator, too. The revolutionary discovery of the new
planet demarcated the beginning of the new cosmic order, to be followed by the
discoveries of Neptune ( 846) and Pluto ( 9 0). The divinely ordained cosmos
in which man once had his place was now unequivocally demonstrated to be
materially infinite. Planets in the modern cosmos became exclusively material,
part of a physical universe which had no moral or aesthetic value. Richard Tarnas
describes the stark reality of the planets in the enlightenment cosmos:
the celestial bodies of the modern universe possessed no numinous
or symbolic significance; they did not exist for man, to light his way
or give meaning to his life. They were straightforwardly material
entities whose character and motions were entirely the produce of
mechanistic principles having no special relation either to human
existence per se or to any divine reality. 5
Ideas of an eternal realm and divine purpose became increasingly seen as quaint
echoes of what humanity once wished the cosmos to be. And as above, so below.
The microcosm, the sublunary world, was equally no longer part of a creator God’s
plan. The harmony of the celestial-terrestrial equation was broken and finally, after
Darwin, God as man’s creator must be denied. Since the classical cosmos was no
4 Tarnas, ( 99 ) p.285.
5 Tarnas, ( 99 ) p.287.
6

longer physically true, it followed that it was not real. The ‘real’ came to be defined
in terms of Cartesian and Newtonian thinking which, whatever the religious intent
of its original proponents, privileged secular humanism and scientific materialism.
Understanding itself was reduced to a single plane:
human reason and empirical observation replaced theological
doctrine and scriptural revelation as the principal means for
comprehending the universe. 6
Understanding was based exclusively on the physical world, and on what can be
weighed and measured empirically in nature, so that everything in the empirical
world could be explained without evoking a creator God. Man’s purpose ceased to
be reunification with the divine and instead, he stood outside the cosmos, looking
in at a world that no longer united Being and Divinity. Aiming to align nature to his
will in order to create his own freedom, and renouncing the past, “modern man set
out on his own”. 7
The striking divide between ancient and modern conceptions of the cosmos must
be emphasised at this point. Whilst acknowledging the gradual evolution in thought
from the classical to the medieval period, Ernst Cassirer dates the beginning of
modern philosophy specifically to Decartes’s Cogito ( 6 7):
With one blow, with an independent, unique decision, the mind
rejects the whole of the past and must now go along a new path
towards thoughtful reflection upon itself. 8
There is now a separation of man and cosmos, the emergence of a split between
an objective universe and a subjective self. This generates what Joseph Milne
has termed the ‘ontological inversion’, whereby modern thinking has “turned
the hierarchy of reality on its head”. 9 Whereas in the ancient cosmos reality
was grounded in God and the eternal, with the sublunary world as appearance,
the modern mind inverts this, so that the world and its appearances are taken as
reality and man no longer sees that reality lies in a divine cosmos, of which he is
6 Tarnas, ( 99 ) p.286.
7 Tarnas, ( 99 ) p.290.
8 Cassirer, p. 2 .
9 Milne, p. .
7

an integral part. As a consequence, he suffers “complete alienation from the actual
presence of all that is”. 20
Yet even as the modern cosmos tightened its grip on reality and pushed the
religious conception back, there were movements that countered it. 2 The reaction
against scientific materialism by the late eighteenth and nineteenth century
Romantic Movement was, however, already enframed within the inversion of
Being, so it could do no other than identify itself with the subjective half of the
subject-object divide. A poet such as Wordsworth, still inspired by the Platonic
ideal, could only recollect - no doubt with a tear in his eye - a time when
“everything did seem apparell’d in celestial light”. 22 The poet who most gives voice
to the ontological inversion is William Blake, and we shall consider him in some
detail shortly.
There survived, however, another band of dissidents who could not offer any
convincing intellectual argument against the modern cosmos but who, because of
their practice and experience, must necessarily stand against it, and these were the
occultists and astrologers. 2
The Astrologers
Enlightenment thought had already led to the rapid demise of astrology in England
and Europe in the last decade of the seventeenth century, a full century before
the discovery of Uranus. Although its decline cannot be wholly separated from
socio-political concerns specific to that period, 24 essentially the scientific world
view, rooted in cause and effect thinking, made it difficult to seriously entertain an
intelligent interest in astrology, which could no longer offer any rationale for its
working.
Astrologers had always assumed an ontotheological cosmos with divine will
20 ibid.
2 Dupré cites Baroque Art as indicative of ‘integrated culture’, p.2 7ff.
22 Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality, Oxford Book of English Verse 250- 900 ( 9 9),
editor Arthur Quiller-Couch.
2 As the prime concern of this study is cosmology, I will limit discussion to the astrologers,
although a strong esoteric and occult tradition did of course continue to develop after the Enlightenment.
24 Curry, ( 989), especially ‘Astrology In Crisis’ (chapter ).
8

and purpose but historically this had placed them in an ambiguous relationship
with the great religions founded in revelation. Christianity had never disguised
its condemnation of astral divination for what it saw as its illicit employment of
supernatural agencies, its pagan assumption that divine revelation was possible
without Christ, and its tendency to fatalism. Moreover, because Greek thought
had moved away from celestial augury to a divine science of the heavenly bodies,
since Ptolemy astrology had been firmly rooted in Aristotelian principles. As a
consequence, its equation of planetary motion with the unfolding of human fate
gave it a false objectivity and apparent predeterminism. Although astrologers
shared with Christians the same divine cosmos, they had been fighting their
corner since the era of St Augustine. By the time of the Enlightenment, they had
already adapted to centuries of censure, potential and actual, without being thrown
off orbit. However, the cumulative effects of the Copernican Revolution and
the discovery of Uranus affected the very fabric of their practice, and the more
fundamental collapse of the cosmological One World put them in an impossible
intellectual position.
Traditionally, astrology has always had a strong practice through the interpretation
of horoscopes, and whilst it looked foolish in the modern world when it could not
stand up to scientific examination, for its practitioners, astrology still ‘worked’
and was meaningful. It did not ‘work’ in cause and effect terms and could not
be justified by the prevailing rationalism but this did not prevent practice and its
attendant beliefs. 25 How, then, did astrologers respond to the new cosmos? At a
material and literal level, coping with the nuts and bolts of physical changes in the
cosmos was straightforward. The astrologers continued to draw their horoscopes
from a geocentric point of view because to do otherwise would be pointless and
impractical. As regards Uranus and the other new outer planets, in the main they
simply accepted them as part of their cosmology and incorporated them into their
interpretations. The cosmos did not become secular for them because they held on
to the One World and were sustained by strands of Platonic thought, as well as a
symbol system based on correspondences and the doctrine of sympathy.
Nevertheless, post-enlightenment astrology sat in an uncomfortable relation with
both the classical and the modern cosmos. Its symbols, rooted in correspondences,
25 Bourdieu, p.79. Bourdieu notes: “ the trouvaille appears as the simple unearthing, at once
accidental and irresistible, of a buried possibility. It is because subjects do not, strictly speaking,
know what they are doing that what they do has more meaning than they know.”
9

enabled the astrologer to recognise that the causal understanding of the physical
world was not the only reality. Symbols, mysteriously manifesting in the physical
world, evoked a sacred order, a sense of unity and the eternally real. The symbol
showings could not be accounted for in terms of logic or science. Diviners and
astrologers therefore had a perception of reality and a recognition of the One
World which came from the ancients, but no modern rationale or philosophy to
give it theoretical authority.
It is not clear that most astrologers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries fully
appreciated the depth of the crisis. They commonly attempted to present astrology
in rational terms and tried to justify its phenomena through naturalistic arguments
such as the Moon’s effects on the tides. Writing during the period of Uranus’
discovery, Sibly evokes the doctrine of sympathy:
that miraculous sympathy in nature, which is admirably manifested
between the Moon and the Sea; by which that amazing body of
water is constantly drawn after her, though no man sees, or can
conceive, how. In these sympathies there can be no doubt but the
vegetive (sic) soul of the world invisibly carries and unites a specific
virtue from the heavens between one thing and another, every where
working those secret efforts, which no mortal can fail to admire. 26
Cosmic sympathy was to be the astrologer’s mainstay, the preferred explanation,
running right through to late nineteenth century astrologers such as Wilson who
adapted it for his even more scientific age. He says of astrology:
it contains nothing supernatural, for it is nature itself, operating in its
usual way. It is the same kind of sympathy which causes the magnet
and iron to approach each other; a detached portion of earth to return
towards the common centre ...the needle to point to the pole ...and a
thousand more instances, superfluous to mention. 27
Such arguments usually convinced only the astrologers themselves, and they
serve to illustrate how far they, too, paid a price for modernity. In effect, their own
position had become inverted. By incorporating the new planets into their practice,
they did extend their symbolic cosmos, but the ground of their acceptance had
become the physical and material definition of the cosmos given to them by the
26 Sibly, p.277.
27 Wilson, p. 6 .
0

scientists.
In accepting each new planet as part of their cosmology, astrologers believed that
they, like the astronomers, were privileged to be part of a new, ever-expanding
cosmos. The new discoveries were seen as enriching what had already been only
partly intuited. The new planets were commonly treated as “higher octaves” of
the traditional planets, so that Neptune, for example, (transcendental love) was a
more noble or pure expression of Venus (love). 28 Astrologers therefore developed
a romanticised vision of their new cosmos, believing that an even greater horizon
lay before them. As late as 890, the American astrologer Chaney produced an
uplifting amalgam of science, religion and occultism in his Primer of Astrology and
American Urania:
No era in the history of our planet has been more distinguished for
investigating the occult in nature than the present. New forces are
constantly being discovered, while the intelligence of the past, long
buried beneath the dust of the dark ages, is once more beaming from
the altars by science. 29
For astrologers like Chaney, there still lies in this vision an intimation of the
One World, in that it presupposes divine order and a purposeful cosmos and has
an attitude of piety and reverence. A similar approach is found in the occultists
who tried to incorporate the spiritual possibilities of each new planet into their
symbolic schemes. For example, in the Cabalistic Tree of Life, the seven traditional
planets had been associated with seven of the lower sephiroth. Nineteenth century
occultists then added Uranus and Neptune to the tree, with the somewhat absurd
assignation of Neptune to Kether, the highest sephiroth and the crown of Creation. 0
It was not until the early twentieth century revival through Alan Leo that a
sustained attempt to justify astrology on grounds other than the naturalistic or
scientific was undertaken, and Leo’s Theosophical vision struck a deep chord and
set the stage for a psychological understanding of astrology. Although various
attempts to incorporate post-enlightenment thinking into astrology have been
made, ranging from the pseudo-scientific to the psychoanalytic, modern astrology
still runs counter to modernity and cannot avoid being seen as supernatural,
28 Devore, p.295.
29 Chaney, p.5.
0 See Crowley, frontispiece illustration of the Cabbalistic Tree of Life.

superstitious or just plain mumbo-jumbo. Yet astrology continues to be a “stubborn
witness” to the One World, and astrologers remain amongst the few who seek to
voice the ancient language of the cosmos for modern times. They inhabit a dual
reality - the modern scientific cosmos and the ontotheological cosmos - and the two
are incompatible. This clash of realities becomes most evident in the way diviners
and astrologers repeatedly encounter philosophical and practical issues arising from
that inevitable concomitant of Cartesian thought, the subject-object split.
Orientation
In trying to move beyond a causal model, modern astrology occasionally evokes
the classical image of the heavens as the ‘moving image of eternity’, but the
primary understanding of this is that it is a ‘cosmic clock’. This has become
coupled with an influential modern concept, Carl Jung’s idea of synchronicity or
‘meaningful coincidence’, an acausal connecting principle. This sidesteps the
problem of causality partly by positing a coincidence in time between planetary
positions and events on earth. Jung’s comment that “whatever is born or done at
a moment of time has the quality of the moment of time” has become a popular
adage for ‘explaining’ how astrology works. 2 Jung himself abandoned this
connection with objective time early in his studies, but it continues to be favoured
by astrologers because it fits well with a practice based on calculating horoscopes
for birth moments. The problems inherent in the apparent objectivity of the time
moment in astrology have been extensively dealt with by Geoffrey Cornelius,
especially in terms of the fatalism and determinism they give rise to. However, to
privilege the birth moment as one of the most primal and sacred of moments, the
moment of new life itself, is the central intuition at the heart of astrology which
seeks to honour the mystery of life, death and the sacred. In this sense, despite
theories of how astrology works, causal or acausal, modern astrologers retain a
Elwell, Chapter , p. -2 . For astrology in current popular culture, see Neil Spencer’s True
As the Stars Above.
2 This is a quote much-loved by astrological authors. It is nearly always taken out of context
and invariably used to support a belief in the importance of the objective moment of the birth time.
Originally given as a memorial address for Richard Wilhelm on 0 May 9 0, it was not published
in Wilhelm’s Secret of the Golden Flower until 957. By 954, however, Jung had already rejected
any quality in the time moment and stated, “this is a notion I used formerly but I have replaced it
with the idea of synchronicity”. See Letters, p. 75-77, (Letter to André Barbault). For a detailed
discussion of this issue, see my Jung and Astrology.
Cornelius. See especially Chapter 9, ‘Some Genius or Spirit’ containing sections on Origins
of the Machine of Destiny and Decay of the Katarche.
2

particular and pre-modern orientation to the cosmos. An orientation to something
is quite different to having opinions and beliefs about it, and it is common for stated
beliefs and conceptions to be out of step with the fundamental stance we adopt to
reality. This affects all of us, not just astrologers, for as Milne points out:
we are actually disposed toward reality one way, but the whole
edifice of modern thinking conceals it in a wrong notion. To put
that in a less radical way, we intuitively know we are connected
to all that is, united with the real, but cannot think it. We have no
discourse that can articulate it. 4
Astrologers intuit the reality of the One World but they are not able to articulate
their relation with that world, other than by reverting to a classical model which no
longer carries intellectual and cultural conviction. Modern astrologers face a further
problem because of their unquestioned acceptance of the physical definition of the
universe given by astronomers. In effect, whilst most astrologers practice with the
mystery of the One World at the heart of their endeavour, they theorise in literal
and conceptually fractured terms.
The nature of the astrologer’s orientation to the One World brings us to Dupré, who
points out that in relation to our orientation “reality does not remain indifferent
to modes of thinking and feeling”. 5 In this sense, the perception of the astrologer
is a vital component in determining the truth of the One World as real. This runs
counter to the astronomer’s assumption that if we do not accept the scientific
definition of the real, we will be guilty of incorrectly seeing the world subjectively,
as we wish it to be. On the contrary, the real shows itself to those who are able
to see it. For example, unlike the astronomer whose truth resides exclusively
in physical realities, the astrologer’s perception is part of a symbolic attitude 6
wherein symbols show truths about things and thereby create a bridge to a divine
cosmos.
This is readily illustrated through an anecdote about the new planet Uranus, not
long after its discovery. The astrologer Varley, a friend of William Blake, was
anxious to know what Uranus, then called Herschel, might mean in his own
4 Milne, p. .
5 Dupré, p.25 .
6 Jung, CW6 para 8 4-829. As Jung reminds us, “whether a thing is a symbol or not depends
chiefly upon the attitude of the consciousness considering it”.

horoscope. He awaited with some anticipation to see what might occur on a specific
day, 21 June 1825, and at a specific time, a few moments before noon, at which
time he had established that Uranus would affect him. On that day, at that time,
his house burned down and Varley’s response was “delight and satisfaction”. His
delight was not only because his prediction had been correct, but also because he
had understood something of the nature of the new planet. Patrick Curry takes up
the story:
Varley has lost his home and all of his property, none of which was
insured. More importantly, however - in his view - he has verified
both the precision of his methods of timing and the evil potentialities
of the new planet. Meeting Varley later, the painter Copley Fielding
asked if the loss was serious. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘only the house
burned down. I knew something would happen. 7
Varley’s orientation to the real is clearly not directed to the sublunary world of
bricks and mortar, nor to their cash value. He is delighted that the new planet
‘works’, and the event has shown it to be not just a physical body in the solar
system, but a cosmic symbol. It means something, and in meaning something, no
matter whether that be fortunate or unfortunate, it reveals that Varley and his affairs
are indeed connected with the cosmos, and that the cosmos itself is meaningful.
Therein is the true delight. The mechanics remain mysterious, although we, Varley
and the modern astronomer might all agree that the connection is not causal. We
cannot explain it, but the compulsion to do so is in itself a result of the ontological
inversion. We may, instead, describe it, and Dupré takes us in the obvious
direction if we are to open up the description of this mystery further, by moving to
ontological ground. In a statement which stands against all that the International
Astronomical Union represents, but which accords with the inner impulse in
Varley’s orientation to Uranus and his burning house, Dupré comments:
it belongs to the essence of the real to appear, rather than to hide,
and to appear in an orderly way. By envisioning the real as such
as harmonious appearance, the Greek view displays a uniquely
aesthetic quality, expressed as much in architecture and sculpture
as in philosophy. That appearance, however, derives not from our
subjective perception of the real; it is the form itself that shines
forth. 8
7 Curry ( 992), p. 9.
8 Dupré, p. 8.
4

We will explore shortly the importance of such cosmic appearances, but to
conclude here, in Varley’s case, with Varley oriented a certain way, a significator
has shown itself. This showing is not of the planet itself - its form being invisible
with the naked eye - but is a symbolic showing, the coming together of the planet as
a horoscope symbol with events in Varley’s life, as witnessed by Varley. As Dupré
reminds us, “the nature of the real is determined by the nature of the relations
among its components, of which mind is the primary one.” 9 This is the adequatio
of scholastic philosophy, mind and reality being perfectly matched to each other. 40
Theoria & Cosmic Showings
This brings us to an important question: what it is that astrologers ‘see’. We return
to Plato’s Timaeus, where he tells us that man was given the faculty of vision in
order that he might see the heavens. The heavenly bodies are both gods - divine
souls in perfect bodies - and agalmata, sacred images which embody and enact the
Forms. However, Ann Nightingale draws attention to the work of the 4th century
cosmologist Philip of Opus who is now believed to be the author of the pseudo-
Platonic Epinomis. 4 Developing the theme of the Timaeus, and largely consistent
with it, Philip considers the highest reality to be the cosmos and the visible gods,
and this makes of the heavens a temple. Nightingale cites Philip’s Epinomis as a
new contribution to the 4th century debate about the relation of theoria to praxis,
and this concerns us because of the way in which the vision of the heavens gives
rise to knowledge.
According to Philip, the theoria of the heavens is the highest form of wisdom, and
theoria is meant not as we understand it today, simply in terms of ‘theory’, but in
its original understanding of a journey to see a god or consult an oracle. Such a
journey would be undertaken on behalf of a community by an appointed theoros
who would report back on his sightings and, in the case of an oracle consultation,
discuss and decide on an interpretation of the oracle’s meaning for the community.
For Philip, star-gazing is philosophic theoria, giving rise to the highest form of
wisdom and knowledge. Looking at the vision of the sacred revelation imparted by
the stars is likened to watching the dancers at Greek religious festivals, “the fairest
9 Dupré, p.25 .
40 Aquinas, Summa Theologica Part , Question 6, of Truth.
4 Nightingale, p. 80- 8 .
5

things to see, dancing the fairest and most magnificent of all dances.” 42
Yet watching the dancers is not enough to bring knowledge. The awe and
religious response the stars evoke must be complemented by study, especially of
mathematics, geometry and philosophy, because only intellectual endeavour arising
out of visionary theoria will produce knowledge. The vision and study of the stars
also instils piety, “the recognition and reverence for the divine souls that govern the
cosmos”, 4 and piety is one of the highest virtues for polis. Nightingale concludes:
The mathematical and ontological “truths” about the cosmos, which
are obtained through a combination of visual and noetic theoria, lead
to an encounter with divinity and thus to the virtue of piety. 44
However, as with all theoria, the visual apprehension of a god or sacred image must
be interpreted in a correct way by the theoros, because only then can the divine be
‘seen’ successfully.
The connection of theoria with astrological and psychotherapeutic ‘seeing’ has
been commented on by Jean Lall, who also draws out the comparison with the
Indian tradition of ‘darsan’, a religious journey to see a holy person or shrine, and
equally important, to be seen by the god. She cites the Christian Epiphany, the
nativity of Christ shown by the stars to the three wise men, as the exemplification
of astrological theoria in the western tradition. 45
This experience of the theoria of the heavens remains true for astrologers today,
despite the difficulties they face in articulating their practice. They struggle to do
so not only because the ‘mechanics’ of their universe have changed for each new
planetary discovery, but also because they, too, have become enframed by the
ontological inversion. Their practice is a constant reminder that they are straddled
across the subject-object split and as a consequence, whilst they see and intuit the
celestial harmony, they also see themselves as separate from it. When symbolic
realisations bring them experiences of the One World, a cognitive dissonance still
42 Nightingale, p. 82, quoting the Epinomis (982E).
4 Nightingale, p. 84.
44 Nightingale, p. 85.
45 Lall, p.52-58.
6

arises for them. 46 Nevertheless, despite the confusions and contradictions in their
position, with such an orientation towards the real, through their divination and
horoscopes, I suggest that, whether they know it or not, astrologers are practitioners
of the One World for modern times, for themselves and for others. In this sense,
they are like the poets, tracing a path back to the gods:
Poets are the mortals who, singing earnestly of the wine-god, sense
the trace of the fugitive gods, stay on the gods’ tracks, and so trace
for their kindred mortals the way toward the turning. 47
Astrologers remind us that the ontological inversion has ‘turned reality on its
head’, and like the poets, they, too, have a language and a craft. It is not enough,
as Philip of Opus states, to simply watch the heavenly dance, because it is only
through application that true knowledge arises. The heavens must be interpreted,
and astrologers have evolved a symbolic system and practical craft as their means
of interpretation. As they use this craft, they elucidate and bring to earth the cosmic
showings aligning themselves and others with their place in the One World.
Mercurius & the Unus Mundus
Like most diviners, astrologers tend to get on with their practice undisturbed by
reflective thought, and their literature only rarely takes up the problem of the
subject-object split which is encountered every time divination and astrology are
seen to work. There has been little direct influence of contemporary philosophy on
astrologers but equally no post-enlightenment thinker, with the notable exception of
Carl Jung, has seriously addressed the issue of divination. The principal influences
on twentieth century astrology have been from theorists in other disciplines where
the subject-object problem and the nature of the symbolic also affect practice,
which is especially the case in psychoanalysis and depth psychology. James
Hillman, for example, has evoked the image of the World Soul both for his work
in archetypal psychology and in his criticisms of psychotherapy. He suggests that
private self-analysis in an hour-long session in the consulting room perpetuates the
illusion that there is such a thing as the Self ‘inside’ the individual. This separates
the individual from the world with devastating consequences for the state of the
world itself. For Hillman, the Self can only be found with others, in the world,
because only through the world and man’s connectedness with the cosmos and
46 Hyde, (200 ).
47 Heidegger, ‘What Are Poets For?’ ( 926) in Poetry, Language, Thought, p.94.
7

others can he know either himself, or the world. 48
Hillman follows in the tracks of Carl Jung, who has exercised the greatest external
influence on contemporary divination. Jung recognised the pervasive problem of
the subject-object split in both his practice as a therapist and through his own use of
divinatory forms, notably the I Ching and astrology. He realised that what he calls
psycho-physical reality, the inter-connected nature of mind and matter as evidenced
in divination, is extraordinarily difficult for the modern mind to grasp:
The causalism that underlies our scientific view of the world breaks
everything down into individual processes which it punctiliously
tries to isolate from all other parallel processes. This tendency is
absolutely necessary if we are to gain reliable knowledge of the
world, but philosophically it has the disadvantage of breaking up,
or obscuring, the universal interrelationship of events so that a
recognition of the greater relationship, i.e., of the unity of the world,
becomes more and more difficult. 49
As suggested earlier, his concept of synchronicity has been taken up by those
seeking a non-causal model for astrology. Jung had hoped to put forward
synchronicity as a law of nature, equal to and counter to causality, and in this
endeavour he was supported by the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. 50 His work has
encouraged some astrologers to seek parallells in modern physics but Jung himself
concluded that the synchronistic phenomena he observed at work in astrology
were ultimately not subject to a recognisable law 5 , and were like ‘just-so’ stories. 52
Moreover, because synchronistic phenomena are meaningful coincidences, they
always have a distinctly subjective component, even though at the same time they
suggest an a priori, transcendental realm of meaning. 5
Jung’s efforts with synchronicity run parallel with his exploration of alchemy,
which he studied extensively in relation to the structure and dynamics of the psyche
because it, too, raised central issues concerning the divide between spirit and
48 Hillman & Ventura, p.5 and Part 1, The First Dialogue: A Cell of Revolution.
49 Jung, CW 4, para 662.
50 Jung, Synchronicity p. 6. Also in CW 8, para 962.
5
Jung, p. 85 Synchronicity.Also in CW8 para 905.
52
Von Franz, p. 00.
5 Jung, p. 42 Synchronicity. Also in CW8, para 967.
8

matter. In particular he explored the ideas of the alchemist Gerhard Dorn ( 5 0-
584). Dorn understood that the opposites came about because although God
created ONE world, the unus mundus, He divided it into two “in order to bring the
‘one’ world out of the state of potentiality into reality.” This split was necessary
because reality is made up of many things, and since one is not a number, the
‘one’ world cannot be reality. The first number is two, and with it, “multiplicity
and reality began.” 54 This reality, however, is the same order as the eternally real,
as created by the demiurge. We are reminded here of the equator and ecliptic, the
Same and the Different, in the Timaeus.
In addition, Dorn tells us that when God divided the One, beneath this division
“lieth hid a third thing, which is the bond of holy matrimony.” 55 It is only through
this third that the two separated halves can unite again, because they cannot come
together of themselves - “only through a medium can the transition take place,
and Mercurius is the medium of the conjunction.” 56 The Greek god Hermes, Latin
Mercurius, is the figure associated with the planet Mercury, planet of language; yet
he is also that which is united, as well as being the soul itself. 57
The ability of Mercurius to unite the opposites gives us a central image of
alchemy, the hierosgamos or ‘royal marriage’ of the alchemical King and Queen,
symbolised by the Sun and Moon. These represent the opposites found in nature
- Sun and Moon, day and night, spirit and matter, and all the disparate, contending
elements of the sublunary world - but they are also the macrocosm and microcosm
themselves. In modern times, we might see the same pairing in subject and object.
The work of the alchemist was to assist Mercurius in performing this coniunctio
and thereby restore the cosmos to its original unity by bringing the separated
halves together again. In the process, the boundaries between the alchemist and the
material he worked on became indistinct, and Jung suggested that as in alchemy,
with astrology, too, a “secret, mutual connivance existed between the material and
the psychic state of the astrologer.” 58 For Jung, the synchronistic phenomena of
54 Jung, CW 4, para 659, quoting Dorn. Jung also suggests that Philo Judaeus and his De
mundi opificio could be a major influence on Dorn (CW14 para 761).
55 ibid., para 658.
56 ibid.
57 ibid.
58 Jung, p.85 Synchronicity. Also in CW8, para 905.
9

alchemy and astrology cross the subject-object divide and give the participant a
sense of the One World. The unus mundus is illustrated by the mandala, with its
central point surrounded by the multiplicity of the world, but it is experienced in
meaningful coincidences, divination, telepathy, the uncanny and so on, which give
us a sense of the mysterious unity of ourselves and the world. 59
However, as a psychologist Jung starts from the perspective of subjective reality
and his project of psychology is therefore already enframed in the subject-object
split. As he reaches the limits of his psychological model, he has to invoke a
principle such as synchronicity to account for experiences found in practice, but
many of the problems with the concept are the result of its implicit enframement
in a split cosmos. In the classical cosmos, or for the alchemist, the idea of
synchronicity would make little sense as an explanation because it would not be
needed. It only becomes necessary when the One World has already been lost.
The very concept of synchronicity is one which could only arise in modernity,
in an age when the subject-object split is so embedded in our souls that the
experience of unity between man and the world becomes a rare and even jarring
event, and we are shocked to find ourselves connected. This is true not only in
relation to synchronistic experiences, but also to many similar mystical states of
apperception which cannot be explained by scientific rationalism. We therefore
need to be cautious about reading synchronicity back onto pre-enlightenment
understanding. For the medievals, the type of experience Jung calls synchronicity
would be acknowledged in quite different terms, perhaps as an act of grace or as
the manifestation of the spiritual, and it would not be reducible to a subjective
component or to individual psychology. Hence synchronicity is very much a
twentieth century attempt to build a bridge back to the One World. Jung first used
the term in his memorial address to Richard Wilhelm on 0 May 9 0, although
he did not fully develop his ideas until 952, and I have discussed elsewhere the
meaningful coincidence of this with the discovery of Pluto, a few months earlier. 60
The participitation that astrologers undertake in the secret mutual connivance
is not only made by Mercurius, the god of language, but it is also symbolised
by Mercurius, who speaks and interprets it. In the medieval theory of
59 Jung, CW 4, para 662.
60 Hyde, ( 992), p. 52.
20

correspondences, Mercury is the planet associated with astrology itself, and with
divination and magic in general. Hence, like the alchemists, the astrologers with
their interpretations were also attempting to perfect God’s work, making the One
World known to us. It is this ideal that continues to inspire astrological practice
today, even if that practice itself constantly falls short of it.
Just as for Plato and Philip of Opus astrological theoria involves the actual physical
sight of the heavens which evoke awe, for astrologers, the symbols as agalmata
and their literal representation in the horoscope evoke the same response, as
we have already seen with Varley. The divinatory symbols of astrology are not
simply metaphors from which meanings can be derived. As agalmata, they show
themselves for what they are, rather than standing for something they represent.
The symbolic language of craft astrology, ruled by Hermes, is true theoria for
astrologers, and we will now see how this has evolved in the modern cosmos.
2

Symbolic Realities
PART TWO
The language of astrology is spoken in a living tradition that has been directly
inherited from the classical cosmos. It is unique in that it is a technical craft
language, rooted in antiquity yet relevant to modern-day practice, having a body
of knowledge that has substantially survived the enlightenment. A comparison
with its sister tradition of alchemy is instructive. Apart from a few rare and
isolated practitioners, the language of sulphur and Mercury, nigredo and albedo
is effectively lost, and has been subsumed into chemistry. Astrology’s planetary
and zodiacal symbolism, however crudely understood in the popular imagination,
remains as much intact and spoken by astrologers today as it was by Vettius Valens
in the third century or Bonatti in the thirteenth. As they have always done, the
astrological symbols continue to allow the astrologer, working with the principle
of correspondences, to make connections that could not otherwise be made.
Venus continues to symbolise love, beauty and the desired, yet also doves and
apples, soft cushions and silk. An inexhaustible yet integral array of meanings,
both abstract and concrete, mysteriously clusters around any astrological symbol,
and in perceiving reality through the symbols, the astrologer makes sense of the
world in a way which cuts across the subject-object split and is incapable of being
explained by modern notions of causality. One of the characteristics of modernity
is its emphasis on the literal and the concrete, and its corresponding loss of
allegory. 6 In speaking the symbolic language of the One World, how astrologers
see symbols and continue to work with them raises a continuing challenge against
the assumptions of post-enlightenment western culture as a whole.
Symbols have a timeless constancy, yet they adapt to each culture in which they
are expressed. Astrological symbols in particular reflect changes in the cosmos
they symbolise, and in turn mirror prevailing cosmological conceptions. In the case
of the three new ‘outer’ planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, alongside the new
meanings assigned to them after their discoveries we find that all three, in different
ways, show modernity itself, and I believe that all three reflect the ontological
inversion. They challenge the ancient order set by the boundary of the outermost
visible planet, Saturn, and threaten to overthrow the symbolism of the traditional
planets. In particular, all three outer planets have stripped meanings away from the
Sun. To the extent that the Sun symbolises the central, unifying and divine source,
6 Bruns, p. 06.
22

it is unsurprising that it should lose its meanings to these new planets, and such a
solar weakening threatens the integrity of the One World itself.
I have shown elsewhere how the astrological symbolism of the Sun has evolved
from an ancient cosmological meaning, equated with divinity and truth, to a
modern psycho-mythic meaning, related to the individual and the psyche. 62 I will
deal here specifically with the way in which, in a post-Enlightenment attempt to
recover a lost cosmology, astrologers have now assigned ancient cosmological
meanings of the Sun, especially those of rebirth and regeneration, to Pluto. This
assignation not only reflects the ontological inversion as a matter of cultural record,
but from a pre-enlightenment perspective, it symbolises it. Given that this is so, we
are bound to take into account the recent demotion of Pluto to a new ‘dwarf planet’
category; but first, to understand the issues better, we need to consider modern
interpretations of the symbolism of the Sun and Pluto.
From Sun to Pluto
How do astrologers turn astronomical fact into astrological symbol? As with all
the new planets, meanings have been assigned to them partly from their namesakes
in Greek and Roman mythology, granted by the astronomers who have chosen the
names, and partly from the worldly events and new manifestations that coincided
with their discoveries. 6 These symbolic meanings are augmented by observing the
empirical showings of planets in horoscopes, as we have seen with Uranus and
Varley.
In the case of Pluto, most astrologers took their first clue from Greek mythology,
where behind the Roman Pluto is the Greek god Hades, ruler of the underworld
named after him. He is the ‘keeper of the shades’, the dead who have crossed the
river of forgetting. The world of Hades is dead and sterile, and nothing is generated
from it. Hades rarely has dealings with the living. He has no knowledge of events
in the upper world and no altar, so cannot be supplicated by prayer or sacrifice. He
listens only when someone strikes the ground with a curse or an oath. On the rare
occasions when he does emerge into the upper world, he cannot be seen because he
wears a helmet of invisibility, just as we cannot ‘see’ the realm of the Shades. 64
62 Hyde, (2005).
6 Elwell, see Chapter 5, ‘Consciousness is the Currency’, p.94- 07 for discussion on the
discovery of Uranus and Neptune and the development of their astrological symbolism.
64 Otto, p. 8.
2

This image of Hades was first crafted into poetry at the time of Homer, and it has
been taken to represent a significant change in attitude towards death in Greek
thought. 65 As eternals, the Olympian gods were so repelled by death that they
distanced themselves from it by assigning it a separate realm. Only Hermes,
leading the dead souls into the care of Hades, can pass regularly between these
realms. Although the dead heroes dwelling in the Elysian Fields may choose to be
reborn in another life, and his wife Persephone is associated with the cycles of the
seasons, Hades himself, and his realm, are not principles of regeneration. He was
conflated with the minor deity Plutus and the riches hidden in the earth, especially
its mineral wealth, but as Walter Otto notes, for the Greeks, other deities ruled the
regenerative powers of nature. 66
These mythical associations of underworld Pluto appeared to most astrologers
at first to be strikingly borne out by cultural developments around the time of
its discovery in 9 0. Pluto became associated politically with the rise of vast
dehumanising and totalitarian ideologies evident in the cults around Stalin and
Mao, and with fascism and the Holocaust in 9 0’s Europe. In a more limited
socio-political context it is the underworld of 9 0’s gang warfare, prohibition,
and the Mafia in America. In art and popular culture it associates with Magritte, the
Invisible Man and television, and in philosophy it is existentialism and alienation.
The underworld of the Freudian unconscious and the instincts, especially
‘Thanatos’, the death instinct, gained cultural ground during this period with the
culmination of Freud’s project seen as man’s struggle to find a right relation with
the dead. 67 In science, during the 9 0’s the most deadly of Pluto’s associations was
the splitting of the atom and the atomic bomb. Nothing better shows the eruption
of Hades into our living world than this weapon of mass destruction, with its lethal
radiation, understood as Pluto’s invisible helmet, making Hades of the earth itself.
These dark and deadly worldly associations of Pluto are unambiguously shown to
us by the Greek myth, so it is at first somewhat surprising to find that, whilst the
negative associations are acknowledged, almost without exception the meanings
of Pluto that have come to be most emphasised in astrological textbooks are those
65 Otto, p. 9.
66 Otto, p.25-26.
67 Schneiderman, p.69.
24

of rebirth and regeneration. 68 These are meanings previously associated with
the cosmological Sun, the visible source of truth, life and divine unity. Reborn
at every dawn, the Sun had been the supreme symbol of rebirth in many ancient
cosmologies, including those of Egypt and Greece. However, during the twentieth
century, astrologers began to assign the psychological concept of the Self to the
Sun, leading to the development of what I have termed the ‘psycho-mythic Sun’
which does not differentiate between the post-Cartesian subjective self and the
cosmos:
although the psycho-mythic Sun shines in a world that seemingly
evokes a transcendental truth or divine purpose, this emanates from,
and is primarily connected with, the individual psyche, and not an
ineffable, divine principle. The light of the cosmological Sun came
from and led back to God; the light of the psycho-mythic Sun comes
from and leads back to the individual Self. 69
In seeking a symbol of the Self, astrologers show how their thinking cannot help
but reflect modernity. The Self of modernity is born out of Descarte’s Cogito and
man’s desire to be independent of the cosmos. It is the inevitable outcome of the
subject-object split in which the One World has divided into Self and Other. This
emergence of depth psychology led ultimately to the withdrawal of meaning from
the cosmos to the individual, and instead of being an integral part of the cosmos,
the person became its source of meaning. 70 The Sun as a symbol of Self therefore
mirrors the twentieth century obsession with the Self and depth psychology, and
has lost its more fundamental meanings of being, truth and rebirth.
Ironically the Sun as a symbol of inner, spiritual rebirth had been at the heart
of the founding of modern psychology, because the symbolism of the Sun was
at the centre of the divergence of views between Freud and Jung. Influenced by
mythology, alchemy and ancient sun-worshipping traditions such as Mithraism,
Jung evoked solar symbolism to describe what he termed the Nekya or night-sea
journey, a dark night of the soul which to him symbolised the spiritual rebirth of
the individual. He first put this forward in support of this psychological theme in
68 Amongst the classical British astrological texts, Carter suggests Pluto as a “healing crisis”
(p.58), and Margaret Hone gives “elimination, renewal, regeneration” (p. 5).
69 Hyde, (2005), p. 4.
70 See Dupré, especially Part II, From Microcosmos to Subject.
25

Symbols of Transformation as an archetypal motif to counter Freud’s incest theory,
and this led eventually to his split with Freud. 7
However, whilst Jung drew on the cosmological Sun as a symbol of spiritual
rebirth, once this insight is enframed in a post-enlightenment context, rebirth
becomes no longer an act of divine grace but a human act, centred in man.
Astrologers have imbibed psychological rebirth into their symbolism without
recognising the hidden penalty of the Cartesian divide in which it is enframed.
Psychology has given modern astrology the appearance of depth and a trace of
intellectual credibility, but in its embrace, astrology has lost the One World. This
is because the world itself, the gods and the planets have all been reduced to inner
psychic states. When this happens, the world falls away because truth and the
centre of reality are located within the truncated individual human psyche and not,
as with the classical model, in the cosmos and its eternal forms. The emergence of
the psycho-mythic Sun in astrological symbolism exemplifies this process.
The value that the twentieth century placed on psychology was reflected in a
fascination amongst astrologers with the darkness and depths of the unconscious.
All the outer planets, especially Pluto revealed truth and deep meaning, to the
extent that the ‘really-real’ was thought to reside deep within the Self, within the
person. Since truth and meaning are elusive to the Self of everyday perception
and consciousness, they are inferred to have their source in some deeper, hidden
recess of the individual called the ‘unconscious’, often envisaged as a Plutonian
underworld. This partly explains why the negative aspects of Pluto were repressed
and its regenerative qualities enhanced, because throughout the twentieth century,
the unconscious came to be considered a source of revelation.
The combination of romanticism and psychology in astrology produced a
determinedly optimistic vision of humanity that is well illustrated, especially in
relation to our study of Sun-Pluto, in the work of Dane Rudhyar. Influenced both
by Theosophy and Jung’s structure of the unconscious, his seminal work in 9 6,
The Astrology of Personality, attempted to fuse Theosophy and Jung’s analytical
psychology by giving voice to a transcendent and ultimate realm in astrology’s
symbolism. In 975 he published The Sun Is Also A Star, subtitled ‘The Galactic
Dimension of Astrology’. In this, he contrasts the heliocentric with the geocentric
7 Jung, (CW5). For a discussion on solar symbolism in the horoscopes of Freud and Jung in
relation to Symbols of Transformation, see my Jung and Astrology, p.5 -66.
26

Sun, differentiating the Sun’s place in an infinite, modern solar system with its
central place in the classical cosmos. He interprets the Sun’s heliocentric nature as
classical theocentrism, a Christian image of God which is “an all-powerful, light-
emanating Sun - the one and only source of light, heat and radiation - surrounded
by subservient dark planets.” 72 He considers this to be a projection by man of his
own egotistic desire to be centred onto the heavens which, inadequately expressed,
has resulted in making the “I am centre of man’s total person an autocratic, proud,
jealous, and warlike ego.” 7 In what he terms ‘humanistic’ astrology, derived from
the galactic dimension of the modern cosmos, Rudhyar sees the Sun as both ego
and as a universal centre of being:
...the Sun is not only the dominant power in his system of planets,
but also one of billions of stars in the Galaxy. In other words, the
Sun can be seen in two distinct roles; and likewise the center of
man’s being can function, both as ego and as one of billions of “I
am” centers in the universal community of Man. 74
Rudhyar entertains a cosmic conception beyond that of most modern astrologers,
yet in my view he is unable to overcome the framing of the enlightenment. This
becomes tellingly evident in the way he understands Pluto. Rudhyar takes Pluto
symbolism much further than simply a meaning of ‘rebirth’:
Pluto relates the ego to a greater center of being, part conscious,
part unconscious. It leads to what C.G. Jung calls the Self, the
totality of the being. It symbolizes the final stage of the process of
individuation, the second birth, the “making perfect”, initiation, the
“birth of the living God”. For Pluto is God-in-the-depths, God made
concrete and actual within and at the center of personality. Thus
the personality becomes transfigured into a Living Person. In this
sense Pluto is the symbol of the Incarnation of God ... His keynote is
therefore rebirth; also the concretization of the All into the universal
One. 75
Rudhyar’s cosmological understanding of Pluto as the “making perfect”, the
“Incarnation of God” and “God-in-the-center of personality” has completely parted
72 Rudhyar, ( 975), p.20.
7 Rudhyar, p.2 .
74 ibid.
75 Rudhyar, ( 9 6), p.294.
27

company with the mythical roots of the symbol. It represents an extreme expression
of the romanticism that befell modern astrology as it struggled to find its feet from
the blows dealt to it by the enlightenment. In allowing an extraordinary inflation of
Pluto’s symbolism, Rudhyar has fallen prey to the ontological inversion, so much
so that even the Incarnation is seen as being at the centre of the personality, and no
longer as God in an earthly, physical incarnation.
This inversion of self and cosmos pervades almost all of the present day literature
of modern astrology, and is reflected in a consistent distortion of Pluto symbolism
with solar meanings. In his Horoscope Symbols, the contemporary astrologer
Robert Hand gives a commonly accepted meaning of Pluto as a principle
which, like the other outer planets, breaks down “the reality structure of normal
consciousness”. For Hand:
Pluto is the archetype of death and resurrection: it breaks down
the old and outworn entities into their component parts, and then
reassembles them into new being. 76
Like the nineteenth century astrologers, Hand resorts to a comparison with the
organic cycles of nature to describe the regenerative power of Pluto, which is
considered to be purposeful and teleological:
Pluto represents an evolutionary power built into the nature of
things. Living things develop: they grow, die, decay, and are
changed into something else ....
Therapists, healers, gurus, religious leaders and the like are the most
positive Plutonians of all because they are the most in touch with the
central theme of Pluto, the death and rebirth of the soul. 77
Hand seeks to counter beliefs that Pluto signifies “unchecked power, decay,
corruption, and death”. For Hand, as with Rudhyar:
Pluto stands for something much higher. It is the purifying fire that
an entity must go through in order to pass from one level of being to
another. 78
76 Hand, p.79.
77 Hand, p.82.
78 Hand, p.8 .
28

The leading contemporary psychological astrologer, Liz Greene, has developed a
body of work influenced by Jungian thought. 79 Following Rudhyar, she links all
the outer planets to Jung’s collective unconscious so that they symbolise repressed
psychic material and the “encounter with the unconscious”. 80 This move tends
to dramatise them, making them the source of ‘deep meaning’ sought after and
privileged by psychological astrology. However, her interpretation of Pluto moves
in a different direction to that of Rudhyar and Hand by bringing out its dark side.
Making full use of the plasticity and fluidity of myth, she amplifies the astrological
symbol through Sumerian mythology and associates it with the underworld Dark
Mother goddess, Ereshkigal. 8 Inspired by the Greek myth of Hades, she also
associates Pluto with the Erinyes, the ‘dogs of Hades’:
Within the horoscope,I would say that what the Greeks knew as the
Erinyes, the retributive face of Moira, we would call Pluto. 82
The transcendental importance given to Pluto is finally exemplified in the
suggestion that Pluto is “the great time-keeper of the collective”. 8 This is a marked
expansion of Pluto’s meaning, both mythically and astrologically, and as we shall
see later in Part , it strips from the cosmological Sun another of its primordial
attributes, the ability to measure time.
I have dealt in detail elsewhere with the effects of such borrowings from Jung on
astrological thought and practice, 84 but suffice it to say here that in the process,
contemporary astrologers have carried through the inversion which privileges the
79 This attempts to link Jung’s structure of the psyche to astrology and turns the horoscope
into an bjective ‘map of the psyche’ which gives the astrologer knowledge of the client’s psyche.
It models itself on psychotherapeutic practices, rather than on divination, and on Jung’s early ideas
about the significance of the time moment, which he later rejected.
80 Greene, ( 98 ), p. 2- .
8 Greene, ( 984), p. 8.
82 Greene, ( 984), p. 5. This statement raises the issue of the apportionment of fate in the
horoscope, and whether or not any one planet can be taken as a universal symbol of the complex
mythic conception of the Moirae, or of their ‘retributive face’. Even if this is accepted, the choice of
Pluto, as distinct to Saturn, the Moon or any of the other traditional planets, is symbolically questionable.
8 Greene, ( 98 ), p.25.
84 Hyde, ( 992), especially chapter 6, p. 02- 20.
29

individual Self as the centre of meaning. In the twenty-first century a belief in
transcendental meaning still allows astrologers to root their practice in the One
World, but by adopting a psychological approach to symbols and by believing in a
romanticised universe which extends into further realms of truth with each newly
discovered factor, astrologers do not acknowledge that the ontological inversion has
already undermined the ground on which they stand. As a perverse consequence,
this attitude privileges the very symbolic factors, the new planets, which are
disintegrative to the traditional order, and which collapse the symbolic cosmos.
The inversion of meanings in the symbols of the Sun and Pluto therefore testifies to
this process, and also symbolises it. There is a cosmic poetry here that is recognised
far beyond the technical realm of craft astrology. The rising, culminating and
setting of the Sun is the image of rebirth and resurrection which reveals the divine
creative force of the cosmos, and has always been associated with light, life and
Being. All cosmologies differentiate light and dark, Being and non-Being, and the
rising and setting of the sun commonly mark the distinction between the realms.
The Sun’s diurnal motion gives us the horizon of Being. By contrast, the Shades
have no Being because they have no horizon, for in the underground caverns and
darkness of Hades, nothing can rise or set. Hades cannot bring anything to being
or light, cannot reveal and cannot bring rebirth, regeneration or resurrection. Only
the Sun has the power to shine and thereby reveal truth, 85 but since the dawn of
the twentieth century, a very different Sun has risen to the Sun gazed upon by
Socrates. 86
The End of the Day
The inversion of Sun-Pluto symbolism is marvelously illustrated in events of the
world. Nowhere is this more strikingly apparent than in the moment when the
inversion might truly be said to be incarnated for modern times: the testing of
Pluto’s metal - plutonium - in the atomic bomb in the Alamogordo desert in 945. 87
85 In Christian thought, one way this might be understood is in the image of Christ and the
harrowing of hell. Light and truth come from Christ, not from hell.
86 Ficino, p. 45. Ficino records how Socrates loved to watch the sunrise: “Socrates used to
stare in amazement watching the rising Sun, motionless, his eyes fixed like a statue, to greet the
return of the heavenly body.”
87 Although scientists had tried to use uranium for the first atomic explosion, it proved too
unstable and the Alamagordo bomb was made from plutonium. In this we see how the discovery of
Uranus, the Enlightenment planet, leads to Pluto; from uranium to plutonium.
0

This was the culminating moment of the scientific race to split the atom and create
the bomb, and it is notable that the scientists working on this quest spoke about it
in metaphors of birth and light, images far more appropriate to the cosmological
Sun than to the destructive force they were unleashing. 88 The test, at dawn, 89 is
described by Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist in charge of the Manhattan Project.
As he watched the mushroom cloud rise, he thought of a verse from the Bhagavad
Gita:
If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky,
that would be like the splendour of the mighty one. 90
Years later Oppenheimer tells us that another phrase from the Hindu scripture also
came to mind at that time, the words of Vishnu: “Now, I am become Death, the
destroyer of worlds”. 9 Here, the father of the bomb, a man of science, quoting
sacred scripture, sets the cosmological precedent for our era. Speaking like an
oracle, Oppenheimer announces Pluto in the Sun’s form and presages the crisis
for humanity. At the dawn of this new day in Alamogordo, the horizon is lost. The
Sun’s wonderful power of light and ability to disperse shadow 92 is transfigured,
and the tiniest form of matter, the invisible atom, usurps that which gives visibility
itself. The Sun no longer dawns on the horizon to bring the day and in his place is
Pluto. With this move from Sun to Pluto, modern man moves from light to dark, at
the very moment that he believes science has brought him from darkness to light. Is
this the end of the day which left the astronomer with a tear in his eye?
Cosmic Disintegration
Both the poet in Oppenheimer and the language of astrology speak to the terrible
dawn at Alamogordo, and the change in the very conception of that symbolism
reflects the metaphysical change that has occurred. As the world inverts light and
88 Eastlea has an extensive discussion on this theme. Successful experiments during the Manhattan
Project were notified to colleagues with the announcement ‘It’s a boy!’. Failures were classed
as girls.
89 First atomic explosion: 2:29:2 GMT, 6 July 945. One week earlier, on 9 July, an
eclipse of the Sun had taken place and was visible from Alamagordo.
90 Widely reported of Oppenheimer. See extended discussion in Jungk.
9 Ibid.
92 For Jung, any such one-sided pursuit of the light as undertaken in the Manhattan Project
would inevitably give rise to a compensatory dark side, a collective shadow.

dark, astrologers follow by inverting their symbolisms of the Sun and Pluto. As
a result, however much they seek to evoke the One World through their symbols,
by adopting a modernist conception of reality, their cosmos remains bound by the
inversion and this leads to a subversion of all subsequent theorising, and to inverted
pseudo-explanations for astrology.
Within this context, the recent redefinition of Pluto by representatives of world
astronomy seems markedly significant. It raises for astrologers an important
question: in what definition of the real do they locate their symbolism? They
began to assign symbolic significance to Pluto because it was defined as real by
astronomers, and subsequently they became convinced of its symbolic effect. Now
that astronomers say that it does not have the full status of a planet, do astrologers
revise their symbolism? Moreover, if we accept the premise that our cosmological
perception is interwoven with philosophical and spiritual understanding then the
cosmological question faced at this point is one which not only affects the star-
gazers. Changes in our perception of the cosmos reflect changes in the conception
of reality, and in attitudes to the sacred, so what does Pluto’s changed status
suggest? It is beyond the scope of this current discussion to speculate, but at the
least, it is certain that this event cruelly reveals for astrologers the state they are in
when they accept the astronomers’ definition of reality as their own.
By finally making evident the fragmentation of the ancient cosmos, Pluto’s
redefinition brings astrologers to the uncomfortable realisation that they cannot
simply extend the old cosmos with each new planet or small solar system object.
This change of status reflects a postmodern cosmos which challenges romantic
evolutionists, psycho-mythic theorists and modernists alike. As a dwarf planet,
Pluto is thought to be one of dozens of large Kuiper Belt fragments, some of which
are equally likely to be classed as dwarves. Do astrologers allow all the dwarves
distinct signification? Are they all relative equals in the One World, and if so, in
what capacity? How astrologers will decide this is not easy to predict. Already,
other trans-Neptunian bodies have been considered for horoscope interpretation,
notably Sedna. This remote and tiny body in the hypothesised ‘Oort cloud’, at the
very edge of the solar system, is named not after a classical Graeco-Roman deity
but an Inuit goddess. 9 Astrologers have no symbolic basis on which to exclude
the dwarves or any of the other (literally) billions of fragments in the solar system,
9 Lectures on Sedna are already being given at astrology conferences (eg, - September
2006 Astrological Association conference, Hertford, UK, within 8 days of Pluto’s demotion).
2

and so their One World has the potential to fragment into ultimate chaos in the
absence of kosmos and order. If astrologers cannot return to the original purity of
the classical cosmos, then they must clarify their relationship with the modern one,
for the One World that astrologers think they can interpret appears to have been
atomised by Pluto’s demotion.
Despite the threatened disintegration, the very way in which the thing itself shows
may also give the clue to its resolution. Astrologers who have cast the horoscope
for the moment the vote was taken to redefine Pluto have been truly delighted by
what they have been shown, for Pluto was rising on the eastern horizon of Prague
at that moment. 94 In the moment it is renamed, Pluto on the horizon shows itself
as wanting to be, and that it shows itself at such a moment, that such showings are
possible at all, lies at the heart of astrology’s mystery. This is the One World poetic
experience that gives astrologers joy. As with Varley, the house may be burning
down but in the very instance of symbolic showing, symbols recreate the cosmic
connection. Perhaps it is only by a hermeneutic move of this order that astrologers
might still save the day for their One World.
94 The vote by astronomers on Pluto as a dwarf planet at the International Astronomical
Union conference was on 24 August 2006, Prague, at :44:29pm CEST ( :44:29 UT). Pluto was
rising on the astronomical horizon. For a discussion of the issues, see the online video of the conference
vote at http://www.astronomy2006.com/media-stream-archive.php

PART THREE
How can we demonstrate such a move with astrology and, like the poets, trace the
path of the fugitive gods? To begin with, we need an orientation towards a cosmos
that is meaningful, and although astrologers are not alone in intuiting this to be so,
they take a particular delight that meaning is revealed through the movements of
the heavens. The heavenly bodies, as Plato reminds us, are the symbols of time,
although almost without exception, mankind does not realise that all the stars
“make up time”. 95 If time itself is integral to planetary symbolism, then time itself
must show the inversion of the cosmic order, and if we are looking for a concrete
manifestation of the inversion we need look no further than the radical change in
man’s relation to time which has taken place as the One World has yielded to the
modern cosmos.
Our inversion of time is so ingrained that for the most part, even though it imbues
every single moment of our waking day, it goes unnoticed. We will now focus
here on a landmark in cultural history that exemplifies the change, the adoption of
international standard time zones. I will describe this change and its implications
through several different voices. Firstly, by a literal discussion of the event, giving
the concrete reasons for the change, and secondly, by allowing the symbols of time
to show time, which involves a discussion of astrological symbols. Finally, I will
introduce a poetic expression of the event through images from one of William
Blake’s prophetic poems. In weaving these three modes together, I am describing
a literal event poetically and symbolically, and this is akin to a pre-enlightenment
approach. The reader who does not speak the astrological language should not
be daunted because the poetry of the moment reveals itself in the simplest of
expressions. The event stands historically in concrete terms without astrology or
poetry, although its implications are more fully revealed through symbolism. But
first, to time itself.
Time Zones
In 88 , the Canadian and US Railways initiated an experiment which was to
have world-wide consequences. They put into operation in the US a world time
zone scheme which divided the earth into a twenty-four meridian time zone
system, based on the movement of the mean Sun, giving a one hour time change
95 Plato, [ 9D], Jowett p.24 , Warrington p. .
4

at each fifteen degree meridian. By 1929, this system had been officially adopted
by every nation, and is in use today. 96 We will first look at why the scheme was
necessary and in so doing will consider several stages of development in our way
of comprehending time.
The time of day has always been measured by the movement of the Sun. Prior
to the mid-eighteenth century, time-keeping had universally employed shadow-
markers and sundials, marking the passage of the Sun by the movement of its
shadow through the day. Noon is when the Sun is at its highest in the sky and its
shadow is at its shortest. This method makes a literal statement of the phenomenon
and accords it the status of truth. Sundial time, known to the astronomer as
apparent solar time, was referred to in popular culture as ‘true’ time or God’s
time; 97 to know this truth necessitates that one looks at the phenomenon itself. It is
rooted in a direct and primordial relationship between man on the earth and the Sun
in the sky above him. Each community had its own true time, based on the passage
of the Sun with respect to its local meridian, and that community had no need to
concern itself with the local time of distant communities. All communities within
a day’s walking or riding distance would in any case have the same appearance of
time.
In addition to the sundial, from antiquity there had been sand and water clocks
marking out the hours as the sand or water trickled through a container. However,
a significant step was taken in the late middle ages with the invention of the
mechanical clock. The clock face was based upon and adjusted to the local sundial,
with the hour hand set to 2 o’clock when the sun was overhead at the local
meridian. This technological development brought to light a problem in that there
is a variation in the length of the day as measured from noon to noon, leading to a
discrepancy of up to a quarter of an hour between the sundial and the mechanical
clock. Accurate timekeeping required an averaging of the length of the day, leading
to the definition of ‘mean’ time and the production of an ‘equation of time’ table
to adjust clocks from the sundial. Such tables were still in use at the end of the
eighteenth century and the period of Uranus’ discovery. The use of clocks and their
requirement for mean solar time is therefore a major step in the abstraction of time,
96 Note this is the year prior to Pluto’s discovery in 9 0.
97 See Le Goff for discussion on the religious understanding of time in the medieval Christian
cosmos.
5

ecause unlike apparent solar time, mean solar time is not directly observable.
However, the final arbiter still remains the actual Sun on a local meridian.
With the invention of the telegraph, after the 840’s the use of the local meridian
itself became problematic because varied local times in different parts of the same
country hindered legal definitions and business contracts. A contract drawn up to
commence at noon would begin twelve minutes later in Liverpool than in London.
This led to the establishment of a time standard for each country, measured from
the meridian of that country’s capital city; in the case of Britain, this was taken
from the Greenwich meridian.
Local mean time, even from a capital city, retains some definite sense of locality,
but with the development of rapid trans-continental transport, it became a
practical necessity to observe the time of day in distant places. The existence
of numerous local mean times soon proved to be a hindrance to the social and
economic expansion brought about by the telegraph and railways. Some of the
absurd situations resulting from the task of time-tabling trains on local times are
illustrated by the situation in America, where the problem was especially acute. In
Pittsburgh, there were six clocks in the station, each one showing different arrival
and departure times. In the state of Michigan there were twenty-seven local times,
in Wisconsin there were thirty-eight. The journey between Maine and California
involved twenty time changes en route. 98 Something had to be done to find a more
uniform time system.
The American railways, in collaboration with the Naval Observatory in
Washington, introduced a new zone system at noon on Sunday, 8 November 88 ,
when the telegraphic time signals sent out from the observatory were changed to
standard time. The scheme replaced the existing system based on local meridians,
and divided the earth into twenty-four meridian zones. Time would be measured by
the passage of the mean Sun over each fifteen degree meridian which marked the
beginning of each zone. Each zone would give a one hour time difference east or
west of the prime meridian at Greenwich.
The introduction of the time zone system is a further step in reducing the
importance of the Sun’s position as the indicator of time, although the clock face
still marks out the nominal arc of the mean Sun in ‘hour angles’ from the meridian.
98 Doane, p. 0- .
6

However, it results in a time which is not only not apparent, it is no longer
local. Because the local meridian is replaced by a standard meridian, the new
system affects place. The new concept of a zone of time further removes human
observation from a sense of place and one’s own local horizon. South Africa, for
example, is now conceived as sharing the same generalised zone of time as Britain.
The demands of modern communication and travel mean that we speak and move
from place to place and the space in between becomes meaningless. This is not all.
Since 958, we have atomic time, based on the caesium atom. 99 Time no longer
has any relation to the Sun or to location on the earth and instead, Pluto’s invisible
atom again displaces the Sun’s bright light. Now, even the clock face, which
mimics the Sun’s diurnal motion, has been replaced by non-analogue digital time-
pieces, finally sundering the imagination from any hint of a solar reference.
Our time of day is now regulated by an authorised public clock which has the status
of correct or ‘true’ time. This advance in an orderly and well-scheduled society is
at the cost of a subtle transformation in our conception of the world. We no longer
accept as a final arbiter of truth the time of day derived from immediate perception;
time is determined by a mathematical abstraction, so that a gulf has arisen between
the phenomenon of the sun and light and the understanding derived from them.
This has deeper philosophical consequences. In the very way we understand time,
we believe its truth resides in an abstraction of our creation, rather than in the
reality of the visible cosmos itself. The loss of the Sun as God’s time suggests
the loss of the algamata that shows us God and the eternal realm, and it has been
replaced with an invisible time, generated by man. This is the same inversion
indicated by the symbolism of the Sun and Pluto. We have moved from sundial to
atom, from sacred to profane. In the process, is it any wonder that modern man,
with all the busy concerns of daily life, has come to lament his lack of time?
Dividing the Deep: The Time Zones Horoscope
Let us now move from the literal to the symbolic and approach this event from
astrological and poetic perspectives. 00 Following the doctrine of correspondences,
99 Atomic time is known as TAI, Temps Atomique International. Note that since 967, the
International System of Units has defined the second as 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation which
corresponds to the transition between two energy levels of the ground state of the Caesium-
atom. (Data from Wikipedia).
00 Cornelius, chapters 4 & 5. See discussion on the use of astrology as spiritual allegory in
relation to the fourfold hermeneutic of early Christianity. The four levels are the literal, allegorical,
tropological (moral) and anagogic.
7

if the horoscope for the beginning of the time zone system in the U.S. is ‘radical’, 0
its symbols might reveal to us the deeper issues involved in the standardisation of
time. Its radicality springs immediately to life because Saturn, the Lord of Time, 02
and the planet of order, is the horoscope ruler, placed in the sign of the divisive
Gemini Twins, dividing up the world into time zones. However, the central theme
of this horoscope is that, because it is cast for midday, the Sun is at its highest point
on the local meridian and is therefore placed at the highest point of the horoscope
wheel, the Midheaven. The Sun on the meridian is the symbol of God’s time, but in
order to create a time zone system based on standard meridians, the Sun has to be
forced from its position of regal authority at the Midheaven. The horoscope shows
this. The Sun is in Scorpio, the sign belonging to Mars and Pluto, whilst Mars is
placed in the Sun’s own sign of the Lion. This is termed ‘mutual reception’ and
allows the planets to exchange places. Iron Mars, red and wilful, is the traveller
and his ‘iron horse’, the locomotive. When the Sun and Mars change places, Mars
reaches his destination by moving to the house of travel, 0 but in the process it
pulls the Sun off the Midheaven, and in this move, man’s time replaces God’s time.
Mean solar standard time and time zones are a practical benefit of scientific
endeavour, working towards the control of the world around us for our
convenience. It is only a convenience; we can still look up at the Sun whenever we
want to. We do not question such a system because we have become accustomed to
the benefits it brings. The necessity of standardised non-local time does not require
even a moment’s thought. We no longer see it as an issue that merits reflection
about the way scientific thinking establishes itself as the arbiter of truth. Yet, closest
to us and least observed, it is the very fabric of our attitude to our world, and our
understanding of human being. The ontological inversion is not a philosophical
concept. It is the turning inside-out and upside-down of man’s relationship to
Being. His ordering of Time is the most subtle and immediate symbolic and literal
0 Radicality is a term used by astrologers to indicate that the symbols of the horoscope are
‘rooted’ in the events which the horoscope is intended to describe. Without such radicality, no meaning
can be understood from the horoscope.
02 The Roman Saturn is the Greek Chronos = time.
0 Mutual reception by degree is a modern technique of horoscope interpretation which allows
two planets in reception to change signs but keep their original degree. In this case, the Sun
moves from 2 degrees of Scorpio to 2 degrees of Leo, and Mars moves from 5 degrees of Leo to
5 degrees of Scorpio. This will then place Mars in the section of the horoscope which traditionally
symbolises both travel and religion - the ninth house.
9

actualising of the inversion. We have lost track of the gods, and now it is the poets
above all who poignantly remind us that the old cosmos has given way to the new.
William Blake ( 757- 827) is one of the most eloquent and prophetic poets of
the inversion because he lived in an era of painful transition and witnessed its
immediate consequences close to hand. Much of his work centres on the struggle
against the Cartesian worldview and the rationalism of the enlightenment. He
symbolised such ways of thought in the mythical figure of Urizen. 04 The parallel
naming with ‘Uranus’ is intriguing, yet this naming came not from the new
planet, known first as Georgian Sidus then as Herschel during Blake’s lifetime,
but is generally thought to be a pun on the word ‘reason’. Originally a Prince of
Light, Urizen is man’s reasoning faculty in a corrupt and fallen state, given over
to materialism and Newtonian physics. He becomes a cold intelligence looking
towards and fearing the future, attempting to control the natural universe and
time itself. To Blake, Urizen destroys both direct perception and imagination and
leads to a mechanism of mind which stultifies life, producing the ‘mind-forged
manacles’. Urizen often appears under the guise of hypocritical Christian virtue and
humanitarian concern, yet the effects of his deeds are satanic. He is well known as
the figure in Blake’s painting of Newton stretching down with compasses to divide
the deep. 05
Is it not Urizen we have in our time zones horoscope? Saturn, master of the
horoscope, lord of time, ruler of weight and density, in divisive and numerical
Gemini, in the fourth house of place and land. In a powerful 20 degree aspect to
the horizon, Urizen divides up space and time:
He formed a line and a plummet
To divide the abyss beneath;
He formed a dividing rule;
He formed scales to weigh;
He formed massy weights;
He formed a brazen quadrant;
He formed golden compasses
And began to explore the abyss 06
04 In Blake’s mythology, Urizen is one of the Four Zoas or eternal powers. He appears at first
in The Book of Urizen and then more extensively in Vala or The Four Zoas.
05 See the front cover of Kathleen Raine’s William Blake ( 970), Thames & Hudson World of
Art series.
06 Blake, First Book of Urizen, Chapter 7, lines 40 -4 0.
40

Urizen cannot tolerate the confusion of a universe which he does not understand
and cannot control. He seeks to discover the natural laws in the chaos of nature
so that he can bring it to order. Yet the more laws he discovers, the more infinite
the cosmos becomes and he finds himself lost in the abyss he is exploring. In the
horoscope, Saturn finds itself conjoined with invisible Pluto:
For when he came to where a vortex ceased to operate,
Nor down nor up remained; then if he turned and looked back
From whence he came, ‘twas upward all....
But Urizen said: ‘Can I not leave this world of cumbrous wheels,
Circle o’er circle, nor on high attain a void
Where self-sustaining I may view all things beneath my feet;
Or sinking through these elemental wonders, swift to fall,
I thought perhaps to find an end, a world beneath of voidness,
Whence I might travel round the outside of this dark confusion?...
No end I find of all. 07
In an attempt to control nature and end the confusion, Urizen builds a temple where
his own laws will be worshipped:
And he commanded his sons found a centre in the deep,
And Urizen laid the first stone, and all his myriads
Builded a temple in the image of the human heart. 08
Urizen builds his temple with Mars in Leo, 09 the planet of will and desire in the
sign of the heart. Yet since the Leo Lion is regal and arrogant, Urizen desires
omnipotence in spiritual as well as physical realms:
‘Am I not God?’ said Urizen, ‘Who is equal to me?
Do I not stretch the heavens abroad, or fold them up like a
garment?’ 0
For his control to be absolute, Urizen must command not only the stars, but the Sun
07 Blake, Vala, Night the Sixth, lines 87- 98, line 204.
08 Blake, Vala, Night the Seventh (B), lines 7- 9.
09 Mars in the horoscope rules over the house of religion and deity, and is in mutual reception
with the Sun. See note above.
0 Blake, Vala, Night the Third, lines 00- 0 .
4

itself, the symbol of God. In order to make the Sun subject to Mars, and subjugate
God to his will, Urizen must move the Sun:
And they took the sun that glowed o’er Los
And with immense machines down rolling the terrific orb
Compelled. The sun reddening, like a fierce lion in his chains
Descended, to the sound of instruments that drowned the noise
Of the hoarse wheels, and the terrific howlings of wild beasts
That dragged the wheels of the sun’s chariot, and they put the sun
Into the temple of Urizen.
When the Sun is taken away from Los, Blake’s ‘eternal prophet’ of creative
imagination, and forced into Urizen’s temple, disaster then follows. Unseen dangers
undermine what has been created. Urizen’s creations come from scientific truth and
abstract thought, standing behind the actual phenomenon and replacing them with
the abstraction. Behind Saturn stands Pluto and his Shades: 2
Lo, a shadow of horror is risen
In eternity. Unknown, prolific,
Self-enclosed, all repelling. What demon
Hath formed this abominable void,
This soul-shuddering vacuum? Some said
‘It is Urizen’. But unknown, abstracted,
Brooding secret, the dark power hid.
Urizen is ultimately trapped by his own creation which engenders a dark and
deadly philosophy, destructive to Los: “And now his eternal life/Like a dream was
obliterated.” 4 Urizen’s deeds bring in their wake a mode of being which, behind
the mask of benifience, is soul-destroying. Like the nature of the ontological
inversion, its own nature is hidden from it, caught in Urizen’s net of confusion:
..... till weakened
The senses inward rushed, shrinking
Beneath the dark net of infection;
Blake, Vala, Night the Seventh (B), lines 28- 4.
2 Saturn is conjoined to Pluto (opposite the Sun), with Saturn at 7 degrees and Pluto at 0
degrees of the sign of Gemini.
Blake, First Book of Urizen, Chapter I, lines -7.
4 Blake, First Book of Urizen, Chapter V, lines 268-269.
42

Till the shrunken eyes, clouded over,
Discerned not the woven hypocrisy;
But the streaky slime in their heavens
Brought together by narrow perceptions
Appeared transparent air. 5
With the “turning wheels of heaven shrunk away inward”, 6 the human soul
terrifies at the loss of the Sun and the rise of such a ‘shadow of horror’.
Blake was writing about Urizen during the era of the discovery of Uranus but
nearly a century before the introduction of standard time meridians. Aware of the
Industrial Revolution and the “dark Satanic mills”, 7 he died in 827, two years
prior to Stephenson’s ‘Rocket’, so although he saw the “immense machines” of the
Industrial Revolution, he knew neither trains, nor time zones. From the symbolic
point of view, however, his words are prophetic. The concrete, literal events in
time - trains and time zones - have a meaning of quite another order, and it is
this order which Blake addresses. His words, like astrological symbols, trace the
gods across time and space. In his own horoscope, Blake has Mercury, planet of
communication, at 26 degrees of Scorpio. This is the same degree of the zodiac
as the Sun of the Time Zones figure, and shows us that Blake sees the Sun on the
meridian, God’s Sun. He prophesies the loss of eternity, the loss of God’s time and
a fallen cosmos. 8
Conclusion
When this great change which Blake sees is referred to the ontological inversion,
its scale can be widened to take in the movement of thought across a vast historical
perspective. For modern philosophy Descartes’ cogito is the decisive blow. For
Dupré the transition has its genesis in medieval scholasticism. For Weber and
Heidegger, its roots trace back to the ancient Greeks, even if its full manifestation
occurs only in the post-Enlightenment imagination. For physical cosmologists
and astronomy, the Copernican Revolution marks the decisive break, while for
5 Blake, First Book of Urizen, Chapter IX, lines 475-482.
6 Blake, Vala, Night the Sixth, line 2 .
7 Blake, Milton, Preface.
8 This fallen cosmos is not to be confused with the Old Testament Fall and original sin,
which to Blake represented a punitive and controlling deity, abhorrent to him.
4

symbolists and astrologers, the breach is finally effected with the discovery of a
new planet, Uranus, destroying forever the numerological harmony of the heavens
and opening the door to the disintegration of the ancient cosmos.
Symbolists also recognise, from mythological associations, that this is perfectly in
accord with the nature of the god Uranus. This sky god created the first primordial
split between heaven and earth, and as a consequence was himself castrated and
cast out by Chronos, lord of time. With his re-emergence into the cosmological
hierarchy in 78 , Uranus again heralds a cosmic split and constellates the subject-
object divide.
In this study, I have shown how cosmological perception is intertwined with
philosophical and religious understandings, and how change in one is reciprocal
with change in the other. The change in the perception of reality became evident
in western culture as the ontotheological cosmos of the One World fragmented
with the discoveries of science and the rise of a new secular consciousness. The
vision and practice of the astrologers was most directly affected because their
symbolic language was constituted in the very structure of the changing cosmos.
Yet astrologers remained in tune with the One World because their symbols bridged
the divide between subject and object and allowed them to defy causalism. With
a tacit orientation to the cosmos as divine, they honour the heavenly showings as
agalmata and like Mercurius, the hermeneutic god, their interpretations even now
unite heavenly and earthly realms. However, in the continual evolution of their
symbols, the astrologers unwittingly adopt positions of modernity which undermine
their world and this is evidenced by the way psychological thinking has induced
them to invert the symbolism of the Sun and Pluto.
To glimpse the true meaning of the ontological inversion, we need the aid of poetic
and symbolic modes which do not reside in what we now think of as rational
thought. Iwan Williams discounts a perception of the universe “as we would like
it to be”, but this common-sense truism disguises ignorance because the reciprocal
relation of man and cosmos demands more from us than this. What is required is
described mythically by Blake as the tremendous work of Los, the blacksmith and
‘eternal prophet’, a solar figure who hammers out reminders of unity through his
creative acts of imagination. 9
9 Blake, Vala, Night the Seventh (A) lines 429-494 in which Los seeks to act as a redeemer,
and The Book of Los, in which the enchained Los seeks to create a brilliant globe, an illusion to
which he binds Urizen’s body. His creation of the globe is reminiscent of the work of the demiurge
in Plato’s Timaeus.
44

The Sun remains central to all cosmological considerations, not only as the literal
bringer of light and life and the marker of time, but also as the sacred image of the
divine. The disintegration of our cosmos is related to the loss of the Sun as agalma,
no longer able to command, unify or time, and this indicates compellingly that the
ontological inversion is concerned with an inversion of time. Before the modern era
time was ‘God’s time’, a gift from God, and as such, it was an act of Grace and not
man’s to sell. Hence the inversion of time stands behind the alienation of labour
which began with the Industrial Revolution and spawned Blake’s dark Satanic
mills.
This points to a darker theme still. The fall of the Sun and its subsumption by Pluto
shows modern man’s attitude towards fate and death itself. God alone calls time
on us all. The loss of the Sun’s authority is man’s refusal to acknowledge what
is given by God and what is taken away by Him. The grasp of modern rational
thought wants to control time, death and mortality, but this grasp only gives rise to
alienation and dread, the “shadow of horror arisen in eternity”. 20
The ancient conception of the cosmos has long gone, yet it is not mere romanticism
to understand that through symbol and imagination we might once again know the
One World. Even in the crisis wrought within our technological, abstracted age,
poetry and symbol cannot be muted. The One World comes into existence anew
in each unique moment of co-emergence of world, man and god. “Creating space,
creating time according to the wonders divine/Of human imagination” 2 remains
the task of the poet, the symbolist, the astrologer and all those who seek to recreate
a true cosmology for modern time.
************
20 Blake, First Book of Urizen, Chapter , line .
2 Blake, Jerusalem, Chapter 4, Plate 98, lines - 2.
45
- December 2006

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