By contrast, Shelley’s creative unfolding and recognition by his peers took place from an early age and at an accelerated pace throughout his brief life. He had already written The Necessity of Atheism at age eighteen while still at Oxford, for which he was promptly expelled, in exact coincidence with his Uranus-square-Uranus transit. Thus he began his own final decade of life, a shooting star of precocious literary creativity, incessant change, intensely nonconformist living, and free-spirited thought. Shelley seemed to identify with a principle of creative freedom that defied limitation and transcended death: “I change, but I cannot die.”
Although the sharp contrast of the Shelley-Schopenhauer comparison is instructive, I must emphasize that any given archetypal complex that coincides with a specific natal alignment or personal transit could be embodied in an extraordinary diversity of ways while still remaining clearly recognizable as manifestations of the same underlying principles. Not every person born with a Sun-Uranus conjunction precisely resembles Shelley, nor are all those born with Sun-Saturn conjunctions just like Schopenhauer. In many other individuals born with one or the other of these two configurations, I found that their lives and personalities indeed reflected the corresponding archetypal complex in ways that could readily be discerned, yet each did so in a manner unique to that individual. A Sun-Uranus natal aspect might be found in the birth chart of a leading feminist pioneer or a free-wandering irresponsible missing parent, a major scientific innovator or a harmless eccentric, a celebrated cultural liberator or a lifelong juvenile delinquent (indeed, in some cases, both at once). A Sun-Saturn natal aspect might be found in a person noted for maturity of judgment, discipline, self-reliance, and comfort with solitude or in a person prone to depression, loneliness, and rigidity. The evidence suggested that each individual drew out different and often multiple elements of the archetypal complex in accordance with the varying cultural and biographical circumstances in each case. Many factors appeared to influence these differing expressions of the same complex, including what seemed to be the unique and unpredictable creative response of each individual in assimilating that particular complex. This diversity in archetypal manifestation was observable in every category of natal aspect or personal transit I examined.22
That a given natal aspect can coincide with the expression of a specific archetypal complex in a virtually limitless variety of forms is, I believe, not only characteristic of all astrological correspondence but essential to it. Again, underlying this observation seems to be the principle that astrological patterns are not concretely predictive but rather archetypally predictive. While I found that a given planetary alignment tended to coincide with a visible activation of the corresponding archetypal complex, the specific character of the final result did not appear to be predetermined in any way by the existence of that aspect. Two different persons might be born with the same planetary alignment, but for one person the intrinsic power and quality of the archetypal stimulus might be considerably greater or more profound than for the other, and that difference was not necessarily discernible in the natal chart. Or the archetype might express itself in one way rather than another (as compulsive rebelliousness, for instance, rather than innovative brilliance), both being equally appropriate to the specific archetype in question. From this perspective, the investigation of major cultural figures was valuable not because they alone were born with the aspects in question, which they were not, nor because their particular cultural achievement represented the likely outcome of a particular natal aspect, but rather because their lives and characters expressed specific archetypal traits in an especially conspicuous and publicly assessable manner.
The combination of archetypal coherence and concrete diversity in the evidence appeared to be fundamental and irreducible. It simultaneously precluded attempts at statistical proof or disproof while it permitted a field for authentic human autonomy. Within these deeper structures of unfolding archetypal meaning, a kind of improvisatory cosmic autonomy seemed to express itself, both in response to and through the autonomous acts and decisions of the individual person (much in the way William James described human freedom as ultimately rooted in and reflective of the universe’s indeterminacy). The natal chart appeared to indicate something like the underlying archetypal chordal structures of life, while the transits suggested the tempo and rhythmic structure of its unfolding. What was not indicated was the unique melody, the specific manner of creative realization that the individual life ultimately enacted within and by means of those archetypal structures.
Over many years of research, I found that the robustness of the specific archetypal principles associated with the planets became more decisively evident as I continued to expand the body of data. Perhaps most telling was the fact that the archetypal principles were even more precisely visible as the particular data under analysis became more challengingly specific. Consider, for example, two people who were born not simply with the same planetary alignment but on the same day of the same year, and who thus had in their respective natal charts virtually all of the same planetary configurations in common.
Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, for example, are most interesting in this respect: The two men were born on February 12, 1809, within twelve hours of each other. One was born to wealth and privilege in imperial England, the other into poverty and deprivation in the American wilderness. Over the years I have studied many such cases, and I consistently found that such exactly contemporaneous individuals tended to express, in their lives and psychological propensities, all of the relevant archetypal dynamics in ways that were concretely different yet on another level were nevertheless deeply parallel and analogous. To illustrate these parallels, it will be helpful here to list briefly a number of the natal alignments shared by the two men, along with the corresponding psychological tendencies and biographical themes.
Lincoln and Darwin were both born with a relatively rare five-planet configuration of Mercury simultaneously in different major aspects with the four outermost planets, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Considered separately, each of these specific aspects I regularly observed as occurring in the birth charts of individuals who possessed a distinctive constellation of personal qualities and tendencies. These qualities and tendencies seemed to embody different inflections of the archetypal principle associated with Mercury, which comprises all that concerns mind, thought, information, communication, articulation, language, learning, study, analysis, and so forth. While the specific concrete form taken by each of these several archetypal complexes varied considerably in the many individuals who shared a particular aspect, each concrete instance was precisely, though differently, expressive of the same archetypal principles.
In Lincoln and Darwin, both born with a configuration involving all five planets, these several archetypal complexes were all simultaneously visible, often in subtle interaction with each other. I will explore the technical specifics elsewhere; for the present it is sufficient to note that among the characteristic traits and biographical circumstances I regularly found associated with these aspects, especially noteworthy were the following: educational circumstances that were constraining, inadequate, or discouraging (Mercury-Saturn); self-critical intellectual rigor combined with unusual economy and clarity of expression and a tendency to remain silent for long periods (Mercury-Saturn); a certain mental stubbornness or tenacity in slowly pondering seemingly intractable problems over extended lengths of time (Mercury-Saturn); a tendency to think with acute, penetrating intensity that in exceptional cases reflected the possession of a powerful, driven intellect (Mercury-Pluto); an unusual capacity for strategic thinking and cunning, shrewd analysis of underlying or hidden motivations (Mercury-Pluto) often combined with close, detailed observation (Mercury-Saturn); a desire to penetrate below superficial levels of understanding to grasp deeper principles and operative forces (Mercury-Pluto); a drive to develop a facility for effective and even compelling communication, written or spoken, intended to influence and transfor
m the opinions of others (Mercury-Pluto); a tendency to think in ways that dissolve previously established structures and boundaries, and to intuit, usually after sustained periods of mental confusion and amorphous daydreaming, larger unities underlying apparently separate and divergent phenomena (Mercury-Neptune); and a heightened impulse for conceiving or entering into ideas and perspectives that defy conventional views and assumptions (Mercury-Uranus) and that often elicit intense negative judgment, criticism, and sarcastic attack (Mercury-Saturn with Mercury-Pluto).
Darwin and Lincoln were also born with a Jupiter-Pluto conjunction, an aspect found in the birth charts of individuals possessing a stronger than usual drive or capacity for personal leadership or cultural power, whether intellectual, moral, or political. In addition, they were born when Uranus was in a trine aspect with Pluto, which regularly coincided with significant concern with or active participation in major revolutionary or emancipatory movements of some kind.
Finally, the two men were both born with a Saturn-Neptune conjunction, which I often found associated with an acute sensitivity to the suffering and sorrow of life, whether experienced by oneself or others; more than the usual concern with death and its spiritual implications; and potential tendencies towards persistent melancholy or depression, insomnia, and difficult-to-diagnose chronic psychosomatic symptoms. Such individuals frequently experienced an enduring response to poignant emotional loss of some kind and a pervading sense of being haunted by guilt or responsibility for tragic events. This same aspect was also associated with individuals whose philosophical outlook showed an emphatic tendency towards skeptical realism, which ranged in character from, on the one hand, agnosticism or atheism to, on the other, a critical attitude towards conventional religious belief combined with a serious, sometimes somber spiritual vision of life of a highly pragmatic, this-worldly nature.
As has been well documented, the biographies of both Lincoln and Darwin exhibited each of these characteristics and themes in conspicuous ways. Yet they did so in quite different contexts, with differing inflections, and with altogether different historical consequences. The identical archetypal dynamics seemed to play themselves out with great specificity and potency in both cases, but in divergent forms and circumstances. The educational constraints, the mental habits, the intellectual power, the silences and long ponderings, the gravity of thought and expression, the capacity and inclination to think outside conventional structures of belief, the strenuously developed gifts for writing and persuasive communication were all strikingly similar in essence. So too their shared skepticism about a personal afterlife, and their tendencies to depression and despair. Both tragically lost their mothers in childhood (Darwin at age eight, Lincoln at nine), losses exacerbated in both cases by their fathers’ inability to provide emotional and spiritual comfort to their bereaved children. Both men suffered the equally tragic loss of their own young children when they themselves were fathers. Both were haunted by a sense of responsibility for the deaths of others, both were unusually sensitive to the suffering and death of others (in both cases including that of animals), and both abhorred slavery. The shared seriousness of their respective moral visions, their this-worldly focus and somber realism, their impulse for cultural leadership, their active participation in major revolutionary and emancipatory events: Each of these particular qualities evident in their life and personality appeared to represent the concrete embodiment of a broader field of qualitative potentials and tendencies, which in turn were intelligible in terms of more fundamental archetypal complexes that were inflected by and through the particular biographical and historical contexts.
I should also emphasize here that birth charts did not appear to carry anything like a pregiven moral vector: There were no planetary configurations or any other factors in a birth chart that correlated with whether a person turned out to be on balance a good or evil person, noble or ignoble. Charlie Chaplin and Adolf Hitler had very similar natal charts, born as they were only four days apart in April 1889 with many, though not all, of their principal planetary configurations remaining in alignment during the brief period that encompassed their births. Both shared a particular combination of several different planetary aspects, each of which I found consistently associated with a specific archetypal complex and field of qualitative potentials. Again, the concrete form these several complexes took in individual cases showed considerable diversity while still exhibiting common underlying archetypal patterns.
Without entering into all the specific planetary alignments in Chaplin’s and Hitler’s birth charts, let me simply note here that typical expressions of the particular archetypal complexes associated with these aspects included idiosyncratic and sometimes virtuosic skills of communication; proneness to nervous agitation; harsh life experiences such as sustained poverty and isolation; susceptibility to displays of anger; problematic relationships with authorities combined with dictatorial controlling tendencies; a strong inclination toward personal eccentricity; marked artistic impulses or interests; unusually charged libidinal or romantic ardor combined with a tendency to experience rejection or frustration; inclination towards erotic relationships with unusually young or emotionally immature partners; and an impulse to experience or create dramatic illusions capable of powerfully moving audiences. Again, both men embodied all these particular characteristics with considerable specificity (even to the point of Chaplin’s impersonating Hitler in The Great Dictator, with brilliant acuity and to the latter’s intense annoyance), but how radically different the moral vector in each case, and how different the consequences.
Whatever the relationship of the moral character to the archetypal dimension—and, like Jung, I believe it is a profound and complex one—the vector of that character does not seem to be in any way prefigured in the natal chart. Many diverse factors appear to play determining roles in shaping how an archetypal complex is concretely embodied: cultural, historical, ancestral, familial, circumstantial. To these must be added such factors as individual choice and degree of self-awareness, as well as, perhaps, karma, grace, chance, and other unmeasurables. Gender alone seems to play a considerable role. Reflecting an intricate interplay of biological and cultural factors, a particular archetypal complex expressed in a woman’s life, as well as personality often appears to be inflected and embodied differently from the same archetypal complex in the life and personality of a man born at the same time. At least some of these differences seem to be intensified in direct proportion to the extent to which patriarchal structures are dominant in the society into which the individual is born. A woman living in contemporary Afghanistan or Nigeria has sharply different potential for the expression and embodiment of specific archetypal tendencies from those of a woman living at the same time in Scandinavia or California. Context is crucial.
All these considerations underscore the central feature of the entire body of evidence I examined and what is perhaps the most critical factor in understanding the phenomenon of planetary synchronicities: the extraordinary empirical display of archetypal constancy and concrete diversity in every category of planetary correlations. I repeatedly marveled at the strikingly coherent patterns of both unity and multiplicity of archetypal meaning that unfolded in biographical and historical phenomena in systematic coincidence with the patterns of planetary alignments. The characteristic manner in which both the constancy and the multivalence were evident in the data in subtle and intricate interplay was, it seemed to me, consistently remarkable.
But given the considerable range of possible manifestation observed for any given archetypal complex associated with a specific planetary configuration, the question arises: With such diversity, how genuine are the archetypal categories? This of course evokes that critical issue that has dominated the history of Western philosophy: the problem of universals. Upon its outcome rest enormous stakes, not only epistemological but cosmological. Are the archetypal categories rooted in something beyond our local projections? Or are they merely arbitrary constr
uctions of the categorizing mind? Are they perhaps no more than figments of the metaphorical imagination?
Only a range of data and a depth of research commensurate with the profundity of these issues can provide the possibility of their resolution, and in the following chapters I have set forth an initial survey of evidence that I believe may help do so. If I may anticipate here: after intensive analysis of a much larger body of evidence during the past thirty years, I have become fully persuaded that these archetypal categories are not merely constructed but are in some sense both psychological and cosmological in nature. They provide a comprehensive conceptual structure that makes intelligible the complexities of human experience in a manner unmatched by any other approach I have encountered. The existence of constantly diverse inflections of the same archetypal principles seems to reflect a dynamic indeterminacy of formal patterning in the nature of things that permits the simultaneous coexistence of both meaningful coherence and creative unpredictability in human life.
In the categories of evidence discussed above, for example, I found that an individual’s undergoing a specific transit, such as Uranus opposite natal Uranus or a Saturn return, did not entail any absolute pregiven constraints upon what external events or internal changes might unfold at that time in the person’s life. Nor did an individual’s having been born with a particular planetary aspect, such as Sun conjunct Uranus or Mercury square Saturn, entail any pregiven constraints concerning the concrete form the various relevant qualities or tendencies would take in that person’s life and psychic constitution. Yet in each case I found that the archetypal principles associated with the relevant planets provided a lucid perspective of pattern, order, and coherence for understanding the manifold complexity of many themes central to that specific individual’s personal character and unfolding biography. Radically different embodiments of a given archetypal complex appeared to be equally possible, as multiple potentialities and “tendencies to exist” (to use the phrase familiar from quantum physics), while they still remained faithful in underlying ways to the deeper principles involved.
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