Customer Reviews

Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View by Richard Tarnas (Viking) Students of Carl Jung and astrologers will find Tarnas's new work an extension of their own cultural psychology of cycles. To what degree the skeptical majority will be willing to read this large work and suspend of their skepticism long enough to seriously entertain Tarnas's correlations and conclusions is another matter altogether. Much as in his previous work, The Passion of the Western Mind, Tarnas has a gift for global statements and pattern-recognition often missed in less far-reaching histories. Essentially this work is an account of the postmodern mind or the cultural formation of self within the last 500 years with an eye towards the future. The book brims with intense learning, literary history, social movements, philosophical schools, scientific trends, business and economic inclinations, scientific developments, environmental changes in particulars are woven together in to decipherable patterns of cyclic development. Readers of Joseph Campbell's Masks of God will find in Tarnas a fuller account of modern creative mythology, often disguised in our world as history and ideology, science and religion. Like his preceding work, this volume is a work of speculative history as corresponding to the long cycles of the outer planets such as Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. These 20 and 30 some odd year cycles offer a grid for Tarnas to notice uncanny correspondences between historical and cultural events in our globalized world which seems to demonstrate a collective unconscious and a human consciousness that will continue to change in profound and essentially unpredictable but radical ways in the future. Tarnas recognizes that we live in a time of incredible cultural and scientific ferment that will radically remake what human beings are and can do in the near futures. These times are fraught with great danger and great promise. Even if one is unwilling to seriously entertain the correspondences between astrological planetary cycles and world-historical events, the book is inspiring because of the way the author sees how we can grasp hold of our future and ride the cycles much as a surfer rides a wave. In many ways Tarnas' study represents one of the most sustained arguments for pattern and predictability in historical processes. One that may set historians on edge because it almost seems to be saying that noticing the cycles of the outer planets can reveal deep patterns of correspondence in terrestrial events. However one responds to this organizing claim in this study, Tarnas has created a great visionary historical work that will influence many, not only in the new age counterculture but also in the business entrepreneurial world of creative innovation and social engineering. If for no other reason, this work has importance as a continuation of Carl Jung's cultural psychology of archetypes and how they can be applied to the interpretation of contemporary events and social and cultural trends in the arts, business, politics, science and religion.

When I read Tarnas' first book, "The Passion of The Western Mind," I was incredibly impressed by the depth of his insight, especially in the Epilogue, which expressed a whole constellation of profound ideas concerning the dialectical progression of world views and the relationship of self and world that I (and probably many others) had been blindly groping towards but had neither the breadth of knowledge nor the integrative power to articulate. In those thirty pages, Tarnas managed to formulate not only a tenable, but a rigorously convincing theory of how the subject-object dichotomy and the disenchantment of the cosmos (which he renders intelligible as the necessary price that we have paid for the individuation of the modern human subject) can be overcome. Since then, through years of study and thought, I have gone back to that Epilogue many times, always impressed, not only by the unique depth and clarity of the insights expressed therein, but by those insights' applicability to a vast number of unresolved intellectual and practical issues that constellate our current, postmodern world view.

After reading "Passion," I did some research on Tarnas and I discovered that he was interested in astrology. At first, I was disappointed that the man who had written "Passion" could believe in something as obviously naive and ridiculous as astrology. However, after reading several elegant and rigorously reasoned essays Tarnas had written about archetypal astrology, I was forced to reconsider my position. Over the next few years, I bought several books on astrology, and I found them to be interesting, though I remained unconvinced since the philosophical arguments contained in the books that I read (when they bothered at all) were generally cursory and unsophisticated.

Over the last few months, I have been waiting for "Cosmos and Psyche" with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, hoping that it would live up to the enormous promise of "Passion" while fearing that Tarnas might have gone a way that I could not follow. However, I have just finished reading "Cosmos and Psyche" and it surpasses all of my expectations. I think it can be safely said, without exaggeration, that this book could initiate a global transformation of world views on the level of the transformations initiated by Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud. Not only is the argument the clearest, the most rigorous, and the most inspired feat of sustained philosophical inquiry I have ever read, but the sheer volume of the evidence that Tarnas presents blasted away the last lingering shreds of skepticism I had been holding onto. Anyone who reads this book will be stunned by the synchronistic (not mechanistically causal) correlations of events in human history with the movements of the planets. There are too many of these incredible revelations to list here. Just read the book. Even if you're ultimately unconvinced, which I find highly unlikely assuming that you're willing to question all of your most basic assumptions (the primary philosophical task), you will still be impressed by the consistently high level of discourse that Tarnas has brought to bear on this "outsider" (at least academically speaking) subject. It's impossible to say whether this book will have an immediate catalyzing effect or whether it will take decades for it to come to popular consciousness, but I sincerely hope that its genius is recognized sooner rather than later.

Don't let the references to astrology in the other reviews turn you off toward reading this book. I am not particularly interested in astrology, and yet I found this book to be a breath taking, far ranging analysis of where Western culture and history have come from, where it is now, and where it is going. I have been looking for a book that could explain the spiritual dimensions of how, and why, the world has been forever changed. It is not simply a matter of having more technology today than we did 50 years ago. This goes back to the paradigm shift in how reality was viewed as the result of Copernicus' resurrection of ancient Greek philosophical theories of the Universe and our place in it. This book provides a well written, engrossing account of this story and how we got where we are today...and where we are going! Highly recommended!

I use this book in the graduate courses I teach (theories of depth psych, qualitative research) and am glad to recommend it as an exciting look at an emerging paradigm, one in which human beings use quantitative AND qualitative tools to listen in on our living surroundings.

For people who feel drawn to astrology but put off by its vulgar forms, particularly the pre-Enlightenment notion that the stars exert some kind of causal force on human doings, this book offers a synchronistic way of holding the entire topic, one that connects world transits (those of the slow-moving outer planets) and historical events in stunning patterns of significance too important to overlook. For a contemporary example, think of the Saturn-Pluto alignment just ending: rigidity, contraction, and Saturn's cannibalistic appetite for innocence given extra punch by the Plutonic underworld. This alignment occurred during the start of both World Wars, the start of the Cold War, the rise of fascist movements all over the world, and the bombing of the World Trade Center and the subsequent paranoia and militarization.

Professor Tarnas piles on the parallels, but he must to make his point: that such correlations must be seen interpretively, symbolically, and metaphorically. This is a qualitative approach, and yes, it is scientific: science as hermeneutics and participatory inquiry. As Abraham Maslow remarked, if the given data don't fit a type of science that only counts and measures, then so much the worse for that view of science.

Tarnas's idea of diachrony is particularly powerful: the idea that events occurring during one world transit develop during all the following ones. The implication is that something at the archetypal level of being is evolving--but evolving in ways discernible in human culture.

GNPR 69b: The Real Blockbuster Book!
As well as the Harry Potter book is selling, I think the real Blockbuster book of the summer is Paul Tarnas' new book, "Cosmos and Psyche." If you, one of your children, or one or more of your grandchildren has taken a "History of Civilization" course in College in the last fifteen years, chances are the text for the course was Tarnas' remarkable book, "The Passion of the Western Mind." Having taught various such courses over the years, I was bowled over a few years ago when Joe McGrath used the book for a year-long course I took at the U. of Arizona SAGE program. The book does a brilliant job of highlighting how the two streams of modern western civilization, Hebraic religion and Greek rationalism, met, and cross-fertilized each other, and in some real sense gave rise to what has become modern western culture. The book sold more than 300,000 copies, and in an age of abundant new text books, has managed to outsell all its rivals.
All the more stunning is Paul Tarnas' long-awaited new book, "Cosmos and Psyche." It is not merely a follow-up to the previous book, it is the summary of Tarnas' own work over the past thirty years on the interaction between the external world, the cosmos, and the internal world, the psyche. Tarnas accurately describes the aftermath of the Copernican revolution as generating a "disenchantment" of the world, as the world was seen as mechanical instead of animated, impersonal and material, instead of inhabited by some kind of spirit.

Now, as one might expect, Tarnas offers a remedy for overcoming that disenchantment, that distancing of self and world, that the scientific revolution brought about. But prepare yourself for a shock. This scholar, with outstanding credentials and a huge following, claims the way to overcome this breach between self and world, can take place only by rehabilitating the much disgraced science of astrology. Not the newspaper or fortune teller version of astrology, he says, but the real astrology, that which was subscribed to by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Kepler, Goethe, Yeats, and Jung. Yes, C.G. Jung, the founder of that "depth psychology" that Tarnas says is the one true royal road into understanding the subconscious.

Tarnas' opening quotation, in the attempt to document his case, comes from Jung: "Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most objective reaches of the psyche." Tarnas claims the works of Jung alone give us an acceptable alternative to the blunt materialism proclaimed by the likes of the physicist Steven Weinberg: "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." What Jung and the astrological tradition offers is the antithesis to the godless theme of the materialistic evolutionists like Jacques Monod: "Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance."

Unless we return to the wisdom of the astrological tradition, Tarnas claims we risk negating the spiritual dimension of the empirical universe, and thereby lose "any publicly affirmable ground for moral wisdom and restraint." Tarnas again turns to Jung for support: "We have not understood yet that the discovery of the unconscious means an enormous spiritual task, which must be accomplished if we wish to preserve our civilization." No mean task this, but the very preservation of our civilization!

A central tenet of Jung's depth psychology is the experience of synchronicity, those apparently incredibly unlikely simultaneous events, that had less than a one in a million chance of happening at the same time, --like meeting your long-lost lover at the train station, or having your lucky number show up when you really need the money. It is the experience of such synchronicities that turn skeptics into true believers, as happens with physicist Victor Mansfield: "I have encountered too many synchronistic experiences to ignore them. Yet these surprisingly common experiences pose tremendous psychological and philosophical challenges for our worldview. They are especially troubling experiences for me as a physicist trained within the culture of scientific materialism."

Even the committed skeptic would be brought up short by the journal entry of C.G. Jung: "My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology. I make horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth. Some remarkable things have turned up..."

Given this background, Tarnas says he turned to the study of the astrology practiced by the likes of Kepler and Newton, which brought him to this conclusion: "The coincidence between planetary positions and appropriate biographical and psychological phenomena was in general so precise and consistent as to make it altogether impossible for me to regard the intricate patterning as merely the product of chance."

So what conclusions does Tarnas reach? "Together with many colleagues and students, I have now steadily pursued this research for three decades. What I have found far surpassed my expectations. I have become convinced that there does in fact exist a highly significant--indeed a pervasive--correspondence between planetary movements and human affairs, and that the modern assumption to the contrary has been erroneous."

Personally, I am left speechless. When I picked up this book, the last thing I expected was an ardent defense of astrology, however far removed from the newspaper horoscopes, and however authoritatively documented with quotations from Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus and Aquinas, Galileo and Kepler. So I pose this question to you: are you open-minded enough to want to read the "evidence" that Tarnas offers, or do you dismiss such reflections as simply beyond the pale of the possible? Would you regard as credible someone who told you your birth chart could predict the climactic events of your life, or that planetary conjunctions decisively influence your most important decisions?

As I always say, tell me what your first principles are, and I will tell you what your most logical conclusions should be. My mind is simply boggled by the fact that a scholar of Tarnas' eminence should propose astrology as a legitimate science, or that he should conclude this remarkable book with a chapter entitled: "Observations on Future Planetary Alignments." I take this to be one of the most paradigm-breaking books I have ever read, for I take the basic thesis to be completely nuts. And yet, that a scholar of this eminence would appear to be so completely convinced....

Richard Tarnas is a very special author. He has an open and original approach to his subject matter, and the reader is richly rewarded.

I have to admit that I have long been skeptical of astrology as a serious discipline, and felt it had too many inconsistencies, lacked a collegial agreement on the various meanings and interpretations of natal charts and transits, and was inadequately predictive.

Tarnas, however, shows with a series of cases, that there seems to be "something going on" with the hard aspects of certain outer planets, specifically Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, when compared to the lives and contributions of individuals, and the patterns of history. This overlay of astrological data upon human history is what has been needed to help make the case that there is some kind of relationship that animates the old expression, "as above, as below."

I think Tarnas is incredibly brave and innovative to present this thesis of astrological influence. Naturally, much more needs to be considered to explore the nature of this phenomenon. Tarnas has, however, given us a compellingly rational framework for this exploration. I look forward to more from him, and others, on this intriguing subject.

This is a fascinating book. To begin, it is extremely well written and for the most part a joy to read. (The second half of the book in which he presents his survey of historical trends and astrological factors, however, does get a bit verbose, tedious, and boring.) Tarnas exposes the limitations of the mechanistic world view that has dominated modern science until recent times with the advent of quantum physics and relativity. His understanding of Western intellectual history is profound. For astrologers there is little new in this book but for non-astrologers his research is eye-opening. I found the beginning chapters to be the most interesting with their discussion of the modern idea of self. Having studied astrology for over 40 years and having been trained in psychiatry and Freudian psychoanalysis, I finally feel understood by a reputable member of academia. For example I have lectured about the conjunction of Schopenhauer's natal sun with Saturn, only to received befudlled looks from my audience. I was delighted that Tarnas uses this same example to illustrate a point in his text. My only reservation is that the author presents his material as if he has personally newly discovered correlations between celestial phenomena and mundane events, which astrologers had already written about for centuries. He does not credit his astrological sources in a way that one would expect of a research scholar. One gets the impression that he has not studied the rich intellectual traditions of astrology in the same meticulous way that he has pursued Western philosphy, religion, and science. I also found myself agreeing with the review of Anton G. Hardy on this site, especially his comments about "Kant's Copernican revolution, certainly an event of import in the history of thought," having "received such scant discussion. The reason apparently is that 1781 falls outside the expected Uranus-Pluto period of influence." Hardy argues that interpretive systems (like astrology and psychoanalysis) utilize "bailout" propositons to explain phenomena that don't fit their system. Tarnas would have been more convincing had he addressed such events headon. Tarnas correlates many but not all major events in Western intellectual history of astrological cycles. But correlation is not proof; it's merely a suggestion that something deeper may be going on. I'm afraid this book will be lauded by astrologers and dismissed by serious scholars of history as not convincing.
Nonetheless, I highly recommend this book because it places astrology deservedly at the center of the Western intellectual tradition.

With its open-minded spirit of hypothesis, empirical observation, and ongoing theoretical refinement, this book is a scientific triumph, scientific in the highest sense of the word: Here is the evidence, and here is a possible theory to explain the evidence. Most importantly, the correlations in Tarnas' methodology are replicable. Anyone with a knowledge of the basic tools of this method of analysis, which he carefully introduces, can investigate the patterning of archetypal principles in his or her own life. To preemptively criticize this body of research without actually investigating it, to refuse to look through the telescope for oneself, might, I believe, be symptomatic of a vested emotional position rather than a genuinely scientific attitude toward the evolution of knowledge.

Tarnas recognizes and even celebrates the virtue of skepticism, as Santayana did when he referred to skepticism as "the chastity of the intellect." Yet Tarnas goes further, reminding us that while "the mind that seeks the deepest intellectual fulfillment does not give itself up to every passing idea," what is sometimes forgotten is that the purpose of skepticism is not to be an end in itself but to prepare us to be ready when a new and deeper truth finally arrives.

I had been alerted to the impending appearance of Rick Tarnas's book by my daughter, Christina Hardy, who studied under him at the university where he was teaching. I was prepared for the fact that his book would be expressing his astrological interests. And though I am not of an astrological persuasion myself, I looked forward to his new writing because of my admiration for his previous The Passion of the Western Mind.

Tarnas's thesis is that there are archetypal forces in the universe that affect both planetary movements and human events. Consequently, one can read from the important periods of planetary conjunction similarly momentous events in our human world. In his book, he focuses on these influences as they affect historical events and periods, and ranging widely through political history, science, literature, music, and poetry, he finds innumerable examples to support his thesis. An example would be the synchronicity of one of the Uranus-Pluto conjunctions with the French Revolution: since Pluto is associated with characteristics of revolution, destructive upheaval, and intensified creativity and Uranus with characteristics of sudden radical change and rebellious emancipation, their conjunction coheres well with the characteristics of this historical event.

There is in astrology, of course, a return to mythological thinking. Explanation is carried out through the postulation of primitive forces, not now embodied in powerful gods, but in "archetypes." In the history of thought, the mythological mode of explanation was gradually and with difficulty overcome when Galileo introduced a specialized concept for the "variable"; by embodying such qualities as continuity and infinite divisibility, this concept-form made measurement possible and opened the path to the objective methodology that enabled science to achieve its remarkable success in understanding nature. The concepts for archetypes are a far cry from such variables. Though attempt is made to elevate them into this kind of abstractness by calling them "principles," their underlying force-like nature is made clear when Tarnas refers to them as "potent" and "activating." Thus astrology reappears in this modern era as a throwback to a previous explanatory mode, impelled perhaps by the failure of science to deal very easily with the human being.

Is astrology, then, "valid"? Can its interpretations be proven? One way to approach this question, I think, is through our understanding of interpretive systems. An "interpretive system" is a set of principles through which one proceeds to make interpretations about aspects of the world - - about features of the human personality, for instance, or in this case, historical events. Each such system can be thought of as casting a certain light upon the world and bringing certain things by virtue of its principles to visibility. Like the boy who has just been given a hammer and goes around seeing everything as a nail, the interpreter uses his principles to orient him in a certain way towards the world and then casts about identifying what he sees.

Examples of interpretive systems abound. In the field of human personality, for instance, there are quite a number in current use, including most notably the system of psychoanalysis where such conceptions as "id," "ego," and "superego" form the interpretive principles. Other systems include transactional analysis where certain early-formed "scripts" are postulated that will be played out through life, Erikson's sequence of developmental stages, and Grof's perinatal theory.

A distinctive feature of interpretive systems is their effort to ensure that none of their statements be falsifiable. To this end, they turn certain of their conceptions to a bailout function, swinging them into use whenever there is danger of making an interpretation that will turn out to be wrong. If the psychoanalyst asserts something regarding a dynamic in his patient and this does not seem to be borne out, for instance, he may say that it is "repressed," or "sublimated"; the dynamic is still there, but not in visible form.

Astrology, it turns out, has quite a number of bailout conceptions. To begin with, it expands its interpretive base by considering that it is not only at the three kinds of hard alignment that the archetypes can be influential, but at the "trines" and "sextiles" in their cycles as well. Furthermore, if an important historical event doesn't occur at the exact time of the alignment, it is allowable if it occurs within 15 degrees in the case of a hard alignment and 10 degrees in the case of a square (p. 212); and we learn (p. 465) that this period can even be extended to 20 degrees whereupon it enters its "sunset" stage. Archetypal forces can be embodied in varying intensities depending on whether alignments are "hard" or "soft" (p. 242). And they are "multivalent" in character, producing both positive and negative effects (p. 260); thus a Saturn influence that would be expected to cause environmental depredations can also spark actions of committed environmentalists. Finally, the cosmos has an "infinite creativity," so one must not be surprised if things happen that weren't predicted (p. 461).

As I was reading about the Uranus-Plato conjunction, a time of revolutionary upheaval, intensified emancipatory impulses, and radical cultural innovations, I was wondering why Kant's Copernican revolution, certainly an event of import in the history of thought, received such scant discussion. The reason apparently is that 1781 falls outside the expected Uranus-Pluto period of influence. There is little doubt, however, that it can be brought under astrological interpretation because another bailout conception is that planets can act diachronically in "waves" (pp. 149, 317), carrying their influence beyond the times of conjunction. So Kant's revolution can be thought to have been initiated during a prime period.

So again to the question of validity. To begin with, interpretive systems' abhorrence of the falsifiable removes them from the realm of standard scientific criteria for validity where falsifiability is a prime requirement (Popper). Nor is there anything in an interpretive system like objective evidence: since whatever falls outside a system's interpretive light lies in the dark, is uninterpretable, it doesn't exist. Whatever "evidence" there is for an interpretive system consists in the nails, simply, that it turns up.

Tarnas's writing is fresh and engaging. I found his constant use of extreme terms - - seminal, titanic, massive - - a little wearing; it gives his book the kind of exalted character that one associates with inspirational literature, a character that would lessen its appeal, I should think, for those who approach it with a philosopher's or scientist's concern with objective analysis. Indeed, I was disappointed when, at the end of The Passion of the Western Mind, he turned in a spiritual direction; after describing so well important philosophical movements that took place in history, he diverted - - partly out of frustration, apparently, with the intractability of the objective-subjective division - - into espousal of Grof's spiritually-based perinatal theory. He seemed to be inviting us to turn from Reason to Faith; and I wondered why he didn't continue with the important thinking that took place after Kant, some of it dealing directly with the objective-subjective division, as for instance the symbol theory of the neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer.

But apart from all this, Tarnas's book is clearly a labor of love and, in comparison with the cynicism and endless deconstruction that characterize today's philosophy, refreshingly positive in tone. He is able to draw into his purview a great variety of historical phenomena, and I found myself continually learning things I didn't know. In deference to his allegiance to a mythological mode of explanation, then - - and in recognition of his enthusiasm, erudition, and literary artistry - - can we perhaps consider his work, not far removed in its Jungian sources from the mighty gods that motivated Homer, a grand literary epic?

Having finished a highly engaging and much anticipated reading of Cosmos and Psyche, I can, as a semi-professional astrologer with an academic background in philosophy, testify wholeheartedly that this is truly one of the most exciting and amazing books to reach publication in our time, a richly elaborated, generous-spirited, comprehensive and scholarly work, illustrating that astrology, when used in the informed and intelligent way this author understands so well, offers the most coherent and persuasive perspective for the interpretation of the broad sweep of history yet achieved. It is difficult to overstate the value of this effort spanning more than three decades of deep investigation and research, resulting in so radical and profound a conclusion for the fields of history, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, and perhaps especially, for astrology itself which has badly needed a critical, thorough and authoritative philosophical grounding since its rapid rise to (sometimes questionable) fame and fortune in the modern world. This is another product that is "truly a noble effort" to echo the memorable rave review given Tarnas' previous one-volume history of early philosophy, The Passion of the Western Mind, by mythologist Joseph Campbell--where there was no hint that astrology would be elevated to so high a position in its sequel. And since the prequel has been so extensively used across the country as an introductory text for the history of ancient philosophy, we can reasonably expect many within the halls of academe (as well as outside) to be somewhat-or greatly-surprised by this follow-on offering.

Tarnas cites the "hard" alignment aspects used by astrologers (conjunction, opposition and square) of the outer planets (Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter) in a matched correlation with sequences and patterns of meaningful simultaneous historical events, called "synchronicities", the term of art borrowed from the ruminations of the late C.G. Jung, an alternative concept of non-mechanical causality gaining currency for some decades now in esoteric studies circles. The skeptical mind of standard science would, of course, reflexively refer to these as "mere coincidences" if they were to acknowledge any pattern of coincidence at all. Astrologers have previously attempted to present correlations of historical evidence with the astrological aspects, but Tarnas, with his extraordinary erudition, historical awareness and cultural appreciation, takes this approach to an unprecedented level with a richly detailed analysis and interpretation for most of the combinations of aspects made by the outer planets during historical times. In one of the most telling correlations cited--the only historical triple conjunction of all three outer planets--occurred during the early decades of the 6th Century BCE when so many great traditions originated all over the world (Greek and Western science and philosophy generally, life and times of Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzse, etc.) in a kind of big bang of cultural origins (which will not occur again for more than a thousand years).

Even for someone like myself already convinced of the book's main thesis--having been working on these and similar ideas during the same time as the author--there was a great deal to learn and appreciate throughout. The explication becomes increasingly persuasive as Tarnas continues to show the match between various astrological aspect combinations and the corresponding simultaneous historical events, particularly for the modern era, with the extraordinary circumstances of the 1960's when the once-per-century Pluto-Uranus conjunction was tightly in orb with all the well-known revolutionary events including the Viet Nam War and its counterculture (which many of us still remember so vividly). Similarly during the 1990's a rare once-per-century Uranus-Neptune conjunction brought us the contrasting soft dissolution of the Soviet Union and the bubble burst of the "high tech" markets-all in nearly perfect metaphoric casting for the astrological timing. There are similar persuasively detailed correlations for the events of the early Twentieth Century and previous ones back to the early period of the Enlightenment with some remarks concerning the ancient period, including that of the New Testament.

Tarnas calls his conditional acceptance of astrology "archetypal astrology" (to be distinguished from a more traditional "predictive astrology"), a seeming appropriate and evocative term, reaching back to ancient philosophy and bringing the issues into the modern period in the lineage of depth psychology which Tarnas regards as the natural predecessor of this effort, particularly as advanced by James Hillman, who is credited for his "archetypal psychology" and is also a well-known interpreter of Jung (see his seminal Revisioning Psychology).

There are fascinating juxtapositions and polished arguments on every page of this blockbuster book knowledgably articulating numerous connections between astrological aspects and historical events with the roles the scientists, artists, statesmen, and other famous and infamous personages played, whose individual astrology Tarnas is often also familiar with, weaving natal astrology together with "world astrology" in a unique and masterful way. Tarnas makes a contribution here to the field of astrology itself because no one has yet shown so effectively how the symbolism of natal astrology fits into the pattern of historical events even among the many worthy contemporary astrological publications. There is an abundance of brilliant and original ideas seen unfolding within this astrological approach to the historical drama and virtually no "filler" or apologies to wade through to get to the action--intellectual rocket fuel propelling us into outer space now symbolically just as the first era of space exploration did at its culmination in 1969 during a once again rare (and different) triple configuration of Pluto, Uranus and Jupiter. It is these rare triple configurations that make the case so powerfully at the most significant historical times which has never been demonstrated so clearly before.

The comparison that comes most readily to mind for Cosmos and Psyche is Darwin's Origin of Species, which had also been a labor of many years that eventually became and still remains one of the most innovative and controversial works of recent centuries, particularly at present (intelligent design, etc.), which went so much against the grain of the conventional wisdom and traditional beliefs of its time. We have only to recall the document signed by more than one hundred Nobel laureates back in the late 1980's which affirmed that astrology should only be considered as the most dangerous and superstitious nonsense to be avoided by all rational modern people, particularly scientists, who regard themselves as properly educated.

What will some of these eminent scientists do, when they are called on to look through Tarnas' "archetypal telescope"? Will they refuse the opportunity, like the bishops who refused to view the Moons of Jupiter through Galileo's refractor? Or will they demur and defer the call to a future generation? Will any become engaged in this dialogue? Clearly there will be many different responses, but this "new world view" presented by Tarnas will strike a powerful chord and resonate for quite some time-I feel almost assured it will actually become a very important new opening for science, history and culture, primarily because of its brilliance and because of the recognition accorded the earlier volume (Passion of the Western Mind). We have had so much reductionist "deconstruction" in the name of critical thinking; soon it will be time for "reconstruction" and synthesis-using a similar kind of analytical understanding but not as code for always following the narrow materialist-reductionist program, which Tarnas shows so engagingly to be related to the Saturn-Pluto archetypal combination now still so dominant in the early years of the current century.


For those who may not bring a critical mass of cultural knowledge and historical interest to Tarnas' examples for full appreciation, this book could easily become an outline for an extended reading program of great historical works as well as many more influential contemporary ones. They will also be prompted for hearing some of the great music (not only Beethoven and Mahler but Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones). And they might also learn enough astrology in the process to be drawn into the next great transformation in the passion of the Western mind as it recovers one of its lost keys, the great astrological one, a complex method and metaphor that sums up the collective wisdom of the ancient world, as Jung put it in his memorable phrase, eventually bringing it to a fuller mindfulness in the new era of synthesized quantum awareness to come later in this century. This book is a major milestone for navigation along that course. Tarnas doesn't attempt to show why or how astrology "works" and even notes the lack of force of statistical approaches to the astrology question thus far while offering his fully empirical case going towards proof of its value as an analytical tool in the laboratory of history.

If this sounds interesting, then prepare yourself for a very exciting, mind-expanding, movie-like experience. You won't regret it even if you can't follow all of the twists and turns along the way-reviewers have noted it is somewhat demanding albeit an intellectual tour de force not to be missed (even if you hate astrology). I can hardly wait to re-read it and mark it up for the group discussions I am already planning.