Richard Tarnas on Synchronicity and the Stars

There's an excellent article in the August 2006 issue of Spirituality and Health Magazine about the work of a man named Richard Tarnas. He has a new book out called Cosmos and Psyche, published by Viking Books.

Tarnas has made a lifelong study of philosophy, religion, and astrology, and he has a very unique perspective on why astrology works and how the planets serve as external cues for synchronicities that we experience.

Initially a skeptic, he went into his investigations determined to get to the heart of astrology. Along the way, he found what astrologers have seen for thousands of years - namely, that certain repeatable planetary alignments coincide with very specific goings-on down here on planet Earth.

Case in point: It turns out that Uranus, planet of invention and revolutionary thought, was making very specific and powerful transits in the personal charts of various great thinkers just at the time these people had a major breakthrough. Galileo was experiencing a major Uranus transit right at the time he wrote The Starry Messenger, his famous work about how the Earth rotates around the sun. That became a significant work in the history of humanity.

In 1637 when Rene Descartes came out with Discourse on Method, which became the foundation of modern philosophy, he, too, was experiencing this same Uranus configuration in his chart. And when Newton published Principia, which became a core work underpining modern science, he was also experiencing this transit in his natal chart.

Freud's psychoanalytic theory, Einstein's theory of relativity, and Darwin's theory of natural selection were all produced at times when these individuals were experiencing the same transit with Uranus in their charts.

Coincidence? Or evidence that the astrologers have had it right all along?

Alignments between Saturn and Pluto are usually connected to times when there are huge crises that arise on a national or global scale. In his studies, Tarnas realized that many key events that changed the world forever happened during Saturn/Pluto alignments. Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland and the horrific events of September 11, 2001 in the US both happened during specific Saturn/Pluto alignments.

Coincidence?

The article goes on to summarize Tarnas' research and how he gradually came to understand that the ancients may have had it right - that the planets and the cosmos itself are cues for universal cycles that repeat themselves.

But he also makes a case for synchronicity - namely, it's not that the planets have power over us. It's more that they, in some mysterious way, are connected to human consciousness and human actions. There's a cosmic ballet going on, and humans are a partner in the dance, with the planets as companions.

The author of the article was having some troubles grasping Tarnas' view, and Tarnas explained it with this analogy. He said, when you look at the hands of the clock and the hands are pointing to 1:20, the hands simply indicate the hour. They are expressing a larger reality (time) rather than causing it.

In a similar way, the planets might be indicating something larger and more mysterious, some quantum intersection between consciousness and matter, and that's why astrology "works." The stars are the "hands on the cosmic clock," indicators of some other energy that is at work.

The stars don't rule us, but they are participants in a strange and wondrous cosmic dance.

I think Tarnas has it right.

Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View