Healing Tones

In the modern era, with the dominant Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm in the background of all thought and discourse on the subject, considerable confusion has been produced by the conventional scientific attempt to interpret—and thus reject the possibility of—astrological correspondences within a modern mecha­nistic cosmological framework. In effect, the Cartesian-Newtonian standpoint led to a single simple question that, within its framework, was regarded as decisive for the issue of astrology’s validity: How can the planets influence events on the Earth if no physical forces have been observed that could cause those events ?  . . . . To a great extent the question of physi­cal planetary influence reflected the residual strength of materialist and mechanistic assumptions in contemporary scientific thought, even after the conceptual shifts introduced by quantum physics. Physical forces represented the only kind of relationship that could be imagined to exist between celestial bodies and hu­man life. This approach to astrology also, less obviously, reflected certain lingering literalist and mechanistic tendencies in the astrological tradition itself that made it vulnerable to a reductionist critique after the ancient Ptolemaic-Aristotelian cosmology was rejected and replaced by Newtonian science. Above all, how­ever, the modern dismissal of astrology reflected the virtually universal modern conviction that the cosmos was disenchanted.

Given the nature of the evidence now known, it is difficult to imagine any physical factor that could serve as the ultimate source or medium of the observed astrological correlations. At least on the basis of the principal categories of data I have examined, it seems to me highly unlikely that the planets send out physical emanations, like electromagnetic radiation, that causally influence events in human life in a mechanistic way so as to produce the observed correlations. The range of correspondences between planetary positions and human existence is just too vast and multidimensional—too manifestly ordered by structures of meaning, too suggestive of creative intelligence, too vividly informed by aes­thetic patterning, too metaphorically multivalent, too experientially complex and nuanced, and too responsive to human participatory inflection—to be explained by straightforward material factors alone. Given as well the consistent nature of correlations involving the Sun, the Moon, and all the planets of the solar system from Mercury and Venus to Neptune and Pluto, irrespective of their size or dis­tance from Earth, any causal factor resembling gravitational influence seems to be equally improbable.

I believe that a more plausible and comprehensive explanation of the avail­able evidence would rest on a conception of the universe as a fundamentally and irreducibly interconnected whole, informed by creative intelligence and pervaded by patterns of meaning and order that extend through every level, and that are expressed through a constant correspondence between astronomical events and human events. Such a view is concisely reflected in the Hermetic axiom “as above, so below,” which describes a universe all of whose parts and dimensions are integrated into an intelligible whole. In the perspective I am suggesting here, reflecting the dominant trend in contemporary astrological theory, the planets do not “cause” specific events any more than the hands on a clock “cause” a specific time. Rather, the planetary positions are indicative of the cosmic state of archetypal dynamics at that time. The words of Plotinus, the most influential philoso­pher of later classical antiquity, speak directly to this understanding:

The stars are like letters which inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky. … Everything in the world is full of signs …. All events are co­ordinated. . . . All things depend on each other; as has been said, “Everything breathes together.”

In the modern era, with the dominant Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm in the background of all thought and discourse on the subject, considerable confusion has been produced by the conventional scientific attempt to interpret—and thus reject the possibility of—astrological correspondences within a modern mecha­nistic cosmological framework. In effect, the Cartesian-Newtonian standpoint led to a single simple question that, within its framework, was regarded as decisive for the issue of astrology’s validity: How can the planets influence events on the Earth if no physical forces have been observed that could cause those events ?  . . . . To a great extent the question of physi­cal planetary influence reflected the residual strength of materialist and mechanistic assumptions in contemporary scientific thought, even after the conceptual shifts introduced by quantum physics. Physical forces represented the only kind of relationship that could be imagined to exist between celestial bodies and hu­man life. This approach to astrology also, less obviously, reflected certain lingering literalist and mechanistic tendencies in the astrological tradition itself that made it vulnerable to a reductionist critique after the ancient Ptolemaic-Aristotelian cosmology was rejected and replaced by Newtonian science. Above all, how­ever, the modern dismissal of astrology reflected the virtually universal modern conviction that the cosmos was disenchanted.

Given the nature of the evidence now known, it is difficult to imagine any physical factor that could serve as the ultimate source or medium of the observed astrological correlations. At least on the basis of the principal categories of data I have examined, it seems to me highly unlikely that the planets send out physical emanations, like electromagnetic radiation, that causally influence events in human life in a mechanistic way so as to produce the observed correlations. The range of correspondences between planetary positions and human existence is just too vast and multidimensional—too manifestly ordered by structures of meaning, too suggestive of creative intelligence, too vividly informed by aes­thetic patterning, too metaphorically multivalent, too experientially complex and nuanced, and too responsive to human participatory inflection—to be explained by straightforward material factors alone. Given as well the consistent nature of correlations involving the Sun, the Moon, and all the planets of the solar system from Mercury and Venus to Neptune and Pluto, irrespective of their size or dis­tance from Earth, any causal factor resembling gravitational influence seems to be equally improbable.

I believe that a more plausible and comprehensive explanation of the avail­able evidence would rest on a conception of the universe as a fundamentally and irreducibly interconnected whole, informed by creative intelligence and pervaded by patterns of meaning and order that extend through every level, and that are expressed through a constant correspondence between astronomical events and human events. Such a view is concisely reflected in the Hermetic axiom “as above, so below,” which describes a universe all of whose parts and dimensions are integrated into an intelligible whole. In the perspective I am suggesting here, reflecting the dominant trend in contemporary astrological theory, the planets do not “cause” specific events any more than the hands on a clock “cause” a specific time. Rather, the planetary positions are indicative of the cosmic state of archetypal dynamics at that time. The words of Plotinus, the most influential philoso­pher of later classical antiquity, speak directly to this understanding:

The stars are like letters which inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky. … Everything in the world is full of signs …. All events are co­ordinated. . . . All things depend on each other; as has been said, “Everything breathes together.”