Richard Tarnas: Archetypal Astrology, Psychedelics, and the Ensouled Universe

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A global crisis is taking place.

The humanity right now is in a liminal condition.

We're having to face mortality on a planetary scale.

We live in an unsolved enchanted cosmos.

The deeper you go within, the more it opens up to the whole cosmos.

The whole universe is inside us.

We are microcosms of the macrocosm.

The consistency with which the movements of the planets.

In relationship to the earth,

and in relationship to each of our own individual lives is seen in our birth chart.

It's a gracious kind of gift from the universe every individual on the earth.

Even though it's a moving planet in a vast cosmos,

is a focus of cosmic meaning.

As evidenced by accuracy of horoscopes,

showing a kind of x-ray of the soul for each person.

Each moment in our life is also astrologically in sync with the larger music of the universe.

We're not like separate entities in a meaningless cosmos.

We're meaning seeking, meaning creating expressions of a universe that is itself.

What can individuals do to find their way through this liminal period or this global crisis that we're in?

I went to Eslan.

There were a number of really great teachers there.

I'm thinking of people like Joseph Campbell, Gregory Bateson, Houston Smith.

Many shamans would come through their Indian mystics, Tibetan Buddhists, etc.

It was almost as if every spiritual perspective, philosophical, most recent sciences, etc.

All the teachers and of that era were coming through there and giving teaching there what they had to share.

It was almost like a temple of wisdom, but it was also where people were going through deep transformations.

It wasn't just in the head.

It was facing inner realities and trying to understand oneself,

when psychology, etc.

I went there, but particularly the person that I was interested in meeting there was Stanislav Graf,

who was the scholar and residence there at that time.

He was also the world's expert in the area of psychedelic therapy, especially working with LSD.

He came from Czechoslovakia, Prague, where he did much of his research.

Then he was with the last of the psychedelic therapy programs in the United States

that were still legal in the early 70s.

And right around the time I went to Estlund, just before that, he went to Estlund to become the scholar and residence

and to start writing his books that summarized all of his research.

And...

The Piamental kind of vibes I'm hearing.

Yes, very much.

I mean, I was influenced by many of these other people as well, including like later James Hillman with archetypal psychology.

We became good friends, but Stan, I'd say, was particularly the mentor for me.

I lived and worked there for 10 years.

I began as a graduate student.

I got my doctorate a couple of years later, and eventually I was asked to become the director of programs and education there.

So I was kind of also making the decisions.

This is by the time I was like 29 or so, I was making the decisions about who's going to teach here, you know,

and having to evaluate what I felt we were going to be the most fruitful teachers of all different practices and perspectives.

So I was there for 10 years, and towards the end of that time, I began to get a sense that even though I had not wanted to write another,

anything else after my dissertation, I, this kind of an interesting side story, a psychic told me,

someone who was a woman who was extremely gifted, she's no longer with us now, but she, well, at least not in physical form.

What was she monitoring her name?

Well, it's okay if you don't mind.

And Armstrong.

And she was extremely intuitive.

She was like the psychic for many people who were kind of at the frontier of the human potential movement,

and the trans-personal movement at Estlund and so forth.

She would come in every year or so.

And I'd heard a lot about her.

I heard how gifted she was.

And so during my first year there, I'm still like 24, yeah, 24 years old at that point.

I sit down with her and she knew nothing about me.

She started saying a few things about my biography up to that point, which she shouldn't have known,

but that we're completely accurate.

And then she, then she mentioned that I would be writing some books as in the fullness of time.

And I said, oh no, once I finish this dissertation, that's it for me.

I don't have a particular calling to write books.

And she said, well, that's because you've been writing all the time to get an academic degree.

It's more for school, et cetera.

So that's going to, but so for you in that kind of state, it's more like pulling wild horses.

But when you start getting the inspiration to write what you are supposed to be writing out of the center of who you are,

that impulse, that deep, deep impulse.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And indeed that started happening around the time I was 28, 29, it just started coming through.

And so then I basically was writing what became the two books, the Passion of the Western Mind,

which was in a sense a kind of preparatory foundation for Cosmos and Psychie.

And then after Passion of the Western Mind came out, I was asked to become a professor.

I started teaching.

And then another decade later, I wrote Cosmos and Psychie.

And what was Anne's role in all of that?

What was Anne Armstrong's role?

Yeah, because I mentioned it.

She let me know that, oh, by the way, you may not think you're going to be writing any books, but you will be.

Right.

I mean, she also told me that I had a little child on the way and who was basically coming to be with me.

It was a brief romance with a woman.

We had a permanent outcome, namely a baby, but it was, it turned out that I was more inclined towards parenting than she was.

And I fortunately had the whole S.L.N. community to kind of be like taking a village to help.

Becca, sorry for calling Becca out, but Becca studied in New Zealand for a while.

My wife was in Dunedin at the time.

Becca was in Dunedin, actually.

Touch it.

Yeah.

Now Becca is my second child and she is.

Oh, sorry, across wise.

Sorry.

Yeah, but my, my first child was a son, Christopher.

And anyway, so that goes way back.

But yeah, Becca is just wonderful.

I was just in contact with her a few, few minutes before our podcast.

Yeah, she's quite brilliant.

Have you, have you, has she been on your podcast?

More research.

More I realized there are plenty of great conversations that are available.

I'm hoping you come on again and if you're willing to put up with more of me,

but you can want to get in the future.

And I definitely think we should have some great chats with, um,

we're back.

It's also a professor in a very gifted scholar and visionary, really.

So anyway, that's the background on that.

I could, I could tell you more about the process that of kind of awakening to the

and sold universe that happened while I was at S.L.N.

My first job there was to be a night guard.

And S.L.N. is right on the cliffs of the Pacific in, in a kind of wild area

called Big Sur south of San Francisco by about three hours.

And it's at night, you really see the, the beauty of the, of the night sky,

the stars, the constellations, um, Venus, Jupiter, the sun.

They're just so, I mean, well, the moon at night, it's just so bright at night.

And, um, so as a night guard after everything's peaceful, um,

or hot springs there that people would come down to use during the night.

And after I made sure that everything's peaceful there,

I would pretty much have the night to myself up on the cliffs.

And just watching the heavens, uh, and being kind of dazzled by its beauty.

But also, I think almost like a transmission was happening,

not to make too big of a thing about it.

But it was a sense of being awed by, uh, the mystery of, of this universe

that were embedded in.

And then, um, at the same time doing the psychedelic, uh, research,

writing my dissertation on psychedelic therapy and spiritual rebirth

and psychoanalysis or deep psychology.

So those were the three topics that I was bringing together for my dissertation.

And as we were writing, as I was writing the dissertation,

I was doing research with Stan Groff, um, addressing an issue that had been studied

without, uh, a, without a solution for, for years by the psychiatrist

and researchers that had been working with psychedelics for the preceding,

you know, 15 or 20 years in, uh, clinical circumstances.

And that problem was, why is it that someone could take a, you know,

a vision plant or, uh, a, you know, sacred medicine, a psychedelic substance

like LSD, take the exact same, uh, dose as somebody else,

the exact same substance, um, and have such a radically different experience.

Completely different, completely individualized, completely unique to the,

the mystical experience of the individual.

Very true.

And also the fact that the same person at different times could have a very different experience too.

Um, uh, there's, there's on the one hand, there is a kind of continuity

that this, that one person would have, uh, session to session,

but there's also, it could be radically different.

One could be in heaven and one and hell and another, you know, or, or two different people

can take the same substance and one person could have a profound healing experience

and somebody else, uh, could have some quite challenging, uh, encounters

deep psychological material that they, that they, uh, are now having to process

and wasn't easy to do so.

It's interesting because the depth is repeatable, but the experience obviously not.

And so I can see the fascination there, um, yeah.

Yes.

So anyway, none of the conventional traditional psychology tests,

psychological tests like the, uh, the Rorschach test, the, um, uh, MMPI, as it's called,

or the thematic a perception test, none of these, uh, had any predictive value

for giving the researchers a sense for how a person was going to respond to the, the, uh,

the psychedelic drug that they were taking for that session.

And so, um, at a loss as to, because quite a lot's at stake, as you, as you probably know,

a, whether you're, whether it's ayahuasca or psilocybin mushroom or LSD,

it can be quite a powerful experience.

And so, a lot's at stake, not everybody is ready for such a deep dive, you know,

for it, when, when really needs to have guidance, you know, a, a proper ritual container,

a wise elder who knows what they're doing, um, et cetera.

Uh, and of course, in the 60s and 70s and beyond, there was just a lot of people

who did not have that.

And we're taking it in all sorts of circumstances with, with many problematic results.

So, a lot was at stake.

So, what we, what we just, finally one day someone, um, Ed Eslin said who was in a seminar with,

uh, Stan Graf said to him, um, you know, I'm an astrologer.

He was also an artist.

He said, I'm an astrologer.

And I have to say that people's experiences, the quality of experience is consistently correlated

with where the planets are relative to their birth chart, their horoscope.

And, you know, Stan and also I, even though we'd explored so many different

new paradigm, uh, ideas or ancient esoteric systems.

Modalities, modalities.

Yeah.

Modalities.

Astrology was the, the last one that we,

out by Pluto as I would say.

Yeah, it just seemed, well, as I now call it, it's, it, it is the gold standard of superstition

for our culture.

Not that astrology, uh, couldn't be used for just the same, as, uh, any religion

couldn't be subject to a nefarious or destructive uses.

So, uh, astrology too is not like without a potential negative effect, uh, how it's

employed, how it's interpreted.

People can be very fatalistic or deterministic, uh, with their readings of a, of a birth chart.

And that's, that's a, that's a big, uh, issue.

In fact, anyway, to get, to get back to the story, what happened was we found much

to our astonishment that the study of transit astrology, that is where the planets are in

the sky at any minute relative to where they were at a person's birth, was the, uh, most

helpful for understanding the, the quality of experience that people were having.

Uh, now, it's very important to understand that astrology does not seem to be concretely

intuitive.

It doesn't tell you, okay, you're going to, um, meet the love of your life on April 2nd,

uh, 2026, uh, on a beach in Waikiki or whatever.

It's, it's not like that.

It's more like it, I mean, a, a good psychic might tell you that and be accurate, a good,

you know, clairvoyant.

Uh, but astrology is archetyply predictive, not concretely predictive.

What does that mean?

Okay.

So archetyply predictive means it, it gives you the larger archetypal field, the, the,

the, that is being activated at a given time, or it's usually a combination.

Almost like an energetic substrate to which you keep you responding off of in some ways at

any given time.

So it's like fields, what like maybe Rupert Schilder speaks to is in some ways.

Exactly.

Rupert and I have actually, uh, done, uh, long dialogues on this exact issue about how archetypes

and morphic fields, uh, are, are pointing back on the podcast and yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's great.

Uh, so we, um, and so the basic idea is that, for example, there's one archetypal field

related to the Saturn archetype that's connected to the, the, the planet that we call Saturn

or chronos or, uh, different, different names and different cultures.

And the archetypal principle, almost like a, a kind of cosmic essence that seems to

be consistently connected to that particular planet, has to do with limit, uh, structure,

order.

It can also, um, relate to experiences of feeling constrained or entrapped, imprisoned,

oppressed.

Uh, but it also can, um, uh, bring the wisdom of experience, it can, it can bring heaviness

as in, um, uh, a burden, but it, or kind of just physical weight, weightiness, um, but

it also can be heaviness in the sense of gravitas, like a person who has, um, um, a sense

of, of moral authority that comes from, uh, long experience, which is another quality

that is related to that archetypal field.

So you don't, we don't know in advance which part of the, of the archetype is going

to be enacted.

And a lot of that is, is shaped by, in everyday life.

It's shaped by choices that we make, um, uh, by, uh, the level of our self-awareness.

Um, so there's a participatory relationship we have with the, with the archetypal field.

It's not a pre-given concrete fate that happens when you see where the planets are and,

or what your birth chart is saying.

Rather, it's a, it's a, um, very helpful template for showing us, uh, what are the potentials

that can unfold through this part of your chart?

What are the gifts that tend to go with this?

What are the potential pitfalls and problematic potentials in it?

And the more we're aware of those, the more intelligently and consciously we can participate

in this kind of, I don't know, it's almost like a music of the cosmos that's, that's

working through us all the time.

So that was, uh, that was the, the initial breakthrough was just realizing that these

stars and planets that I was watching each night, actually, there's, uh, spiritual meaning

and depth in, in, in the cosmos.

It's there, they're not just, uh, material objects, it's, we, we live in an installed enchanted

cosmos and, uh, even this earth seems to be a focus of cosmic meaning and each of us

is individuals.

So, um, I imagine that at one time or another in your podcast, you may have talked about

synchronicities in, in your, uh, yeah, not to, it'd be amazing to hear from it about it

from you.

I did want to sort of add though, just if I could as a little footnote here, like, it's

pretty, like, I mean, it's, it's totally integrated into your work.

So, but for those that are tuning into this for the first time, like, let it not be lost

on you in some way, you are studying the deepest of the deepest of the psychedelic depth

spaces that one can individually go into inward.

They literally use the word psychonaut, yeah.

But then on the other hand, you've gone full bang energetic astronaut all the way out

there.

So it's gone in the pursuits of deep depth psychology.

We've gone, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like the

other side, like the, you know, all these planets are all out there.

I like, the deepest parts of you are also the deepest parts of that.

It gets very, it's reconciling in many ways, Eastern wisdom with Western wisdom.

There's a whole deeply profound thing that's happening that I just, I just didn't want

to remiss over that as you were, as you were going to continue, sorry, I just

wanted that in particular.

Because the, it can, one can get the impression that when you're doing a deep dive into your

inner being, that you're just totally kind of enclosed inside your cranium or something.

But in fact, as Graf has said, as, as, as typical for mystics as well, to say that the

deeper you go within, the, the more it, almost like a mobius strip, it, it opens up to the

whole cosmos.

I mean, basically, the whole universe is inside us.

We are microcosms of the macrocosm.

We're not separate from it.

And our own efforts to explore deep within ourselves can ultimately open up to a, a much

richer, spiritually profound universe that is not just an inner universe.

As Shakespeare said, there's more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the,

in the conventional philosophy.

Talk to us of, um, liminal edges, then, I mean, as you're going into depth psychology,

it's the pursuit of frontiers in many ways.

I imagine edges, edges.

I mean, what I really wanted to hear about was liminal edges and what that actually means

to you.

What is the liminal edge?

So, of course, we're, one faces those in the kinds of, kinds of experiences we're talking

about there.

But I also believe, you know, liminal in the sense that, you know, we're at a, that threshold

experiences, experiences where you're in between states and where you're, where there's

a, a quality of uncertainty and the unknown.

But at the same time, something deep is going on.

And the, I think our, I think humanity right now is in a liminal condition, not just individuals

with their own private, spiritual pursuit.

But all of humanity is, is in a liminal place where we're, we're having to face, um, mortality

on a planetary scale, we're having to face, uh, a whole challenge to the conventional

identity that you, uh, for example, modern man often spoken of that way with a kind of

masculine bias of modern man, um, had a whole self image of who he was relative

to nature, feeling like it's man is somehow separate from nature, needs to understand

it, uh, better to exploit it for his own self enhancement.

And by contrast, um, uh, people who go through this liminal, I would call it an initiation.

It's an initiatory transformation, uh, come, come to realize that in fact, we are participants

in a much greater mystery.

We are not separate, uh, beings that have intelligence and aspirations and a quest for

meaning in a universe that is seen as fundamentally meaningless, purposed lists, uh, unconscious.

That's the, that's the mainstream modern world view that most of us were educated with.

Our first entry crisis of meaning, I mean, it's, it's here.

It's around us.

It's happening right now.

Is it not?

That's exactly it.

Yeah.

It's, it's very much a, a, a crisis of meaning and a crisis of meaning in turn means, uh,

signifies that there is a, uh, it's a crisis of identity, uh, as to who, who we are, who

I am and who am I in relationship to the universe?

So, um, it could, I, I brought up psychedelics and perhaps that's that, uh, because that played

a, a crucial role in what, what, uh, I was interested in studying that brought me to

Esselin and then what opened up the, um, the mysteries of, of, of astrology, uh, to me,

as Stan Groff put it, when we finally discovered a, a method for being able to more fruitfully

track the, what kinds of experiences people would have in these powerful states of consciousness,

the answer turned out to be just as controversial as psychedelics, uh, namely astrology.

Oh, here we are, here, you know, we've got like, but it does have, it, it does have between

you and I, some of its conveniences in that it's built upon something deeply ancient.

I mean, I know conveniences probably used a bit light harder than it's such, but it's,

I mean, how, how, how brilliant.

Only the modern world, uh, in its mainstream, let's say, more, uh, you know, the intellectual

authorities of modernity had a negative, a negative view of astrology.

And I can quite understand because it's kind of astrology that they were exposed to.

It was very fated.

It was very fated and fatalistic.

It was all this.

F, F, F, F, F.

Or.

It's important.

Or basically horoscope columns in the newspaper that told you that because you're

Libra or an Aries or a Gemini, you're going to have that experience today.

I mean, it, it, it, it wasn't exactly, um, uh, confidence inducing and, and I, I think

it's important to, you have to research the evidence for yourself.

One can just swallow, pull what somebody else is telling you about astrology.

You, you, you, you, you need to look at it yourself and, and make your own assessment.

That's one of the nice things about, um, is a word that I use on the back of my readings

when I offer people things in the reading.

I go, Hey, this is something that could be really good as premium material for you to

go away and contemplate.

Um, and sometimes it's something as straightforward as boundaries like we discussed earlier,

like boundaries, like a lot of the water signs to have a deep relationship where they

can work with boundaries.

But yeah, that, I actually don't discuss, uh, the psychedelic experience, particularly

in there, um, because I felt the way to present this material and the power of the, and

consistency of the astrological correlations is to, um, is to look at history, which we

all, it's a, it's in the public sphere.

We were all able to, we know when the French revolution happened.

We know when the sixties revolutions happened.

We know when the world wars took place, et cetera, uh, and we also know what famous, uh,

individuals, uh, went through at, at particular times.

It's in the public domain, so to speak, so that that way my readers could make assessments

for themselves, whether these correlations are persuasive.

Well, if you're talking about people's private inner experience, whether it's psychedelic

or, or, or psychological, uh, self-exploration, et cetera, you're looking at just a, a smaller

number of cases, you're not looking at the big picture of history, but you're also looking

at things that everybody doesn't have the, the evidence for, um, but history, everybody

can see that evidence and then make, then be able to make an evaluation.

So, cosmos and psyche is mainly focused on, um, showing how the movements of the planets

consistently correlated with archetypal patterns in human history that coincided with periods

of, uh, you know, revolutionary upheaval or with spiritual, um, like births of new religions,

cultural renaissance or periods of, of great, uh, crisis and, uh, wars and so forth.

So, uh, what I, what I did in cosmos and psyche was to lay out those patterns of correlation

in history, step by step, so that everybody could follow it as, uh, as clearly as possible.

And then I embedded it in, uh, with an introduction that gives the philosophical and kind of historical

background to, um, being able to understand the evidence and, and understand the basic

paradigm or modality and then at the end to much, much more, kind of just say, well, what

are the implications of this evidence?

Um, what does this say about the nature of the universe and about the nature of the

human being and, uh, if there's to summarize that, we could say that the consistency with

which the movements of the planets in relationship to the earth and in relationship to each of

our own individual lives and our own births as seen in our birth chart or horoscope.

The consistency of those correlations, those synchronicities that are constantly being

produced by the universe in our lives.

It's a gracious kind of gift from the universe to help us recognize that we live in an,

an intelligent universe and that this earth, even though it's a moving planet in a vast

cosmos, is in some ways a focus of cosmic meaning and that every individual on this earth

is also a focus of cosmic meaning.

Yes, the earth is moving.

We're on one planet.

There's perhaps many centers of cosmic meaning, but clearly ours is and clearly every individual

is as evidenced by accuracy of horoscopes showing a kind of x-ray of the soul for each

person if it's kind of properly interpreted.

And on the larger span of each of our lives, each moment in our life is also astrologically

in sync with the larger music of the universe, all of which suggests that in some sense we

as individuals in every moment of time and the earth itself are all of significance to this

universe that in some sense the universe cares about this earth and about each individual

that we're almost kind of constantly being bathed by meaning, bathed by a kind of love,

if I can not sound too mystically carried away, but that's my, after 50 years of studying

this material and also feeling into its implications with my whole being and spirit, it's quite

clear that we live in a, a universe in which this liminal state that you brought up and

that I believe we as a civilization and as a species are going through, as a planet are

going through, it's taking place in a much larger context that the universe is in a sense

holding space as my friend Chad Harris puts, just as a community can hold space for an individual

to go through deep transformations even when they're quite difficult, if that is a loving community

that can help hold that person to go through what they need to go through to get through the dark

night of the soul and have an illumination or a breakthrough. Well, in the same way, the universe

is holding space kind of literally in space for us here in, under earth and as human beings to go

through what is clearly quite a liminal threshold in human history. Do you think astrology is going

through a renaissance at this time? Yes, I do. It's partly because there are so many

intelligent, thoughtful, well-educated people who are engaging it and there was quite a period,

now it's different in India and other cultures where astrology continued to be carried in one way or

another even in the universities in the case of India. But in the United States and in Europe,

starting back in during the Enlightenment period in Europe around late 17th century,

into the 18th century, astrology stopped being, for many understandable reasons, astrology stopped

being studied by many of the better minds in the culture. And so it went underground, it wasn't

developing the language was becoming more and more antique so that it wasn't speaking to

contemporary audiences. And starting in the, particularly in the mid 20th century and especially

from the 60s on, more and more people, I think this partly had to do with the whole transformation

of consciousness that was happening in the 60s and beyond, people started studying astrology again

and getting a sense that there's more going on than meets the eye with this. And also,

yeah, just having intuitions that we lived in and sold cosmos, etc. And so also, I think today,

the millennial generation, I noticed that they don't have the same intellectual armoring or what

we might call epistemological barriers. Defense mechanisms against something or the other.

It's actually a bit of fun about it for us actually, isn't that interesting?

Yeah, so I think in general, millennials have a much more flexible attitude about

what is real, what could be useful in their lives. And astrology has become very widespread

indeed as a result of the internet, for example, I mean, even what we're doing right here.

Do you think some of that flexibility that millennials carry, part of me for interrupting

the field would have been influenced by what happened in the revolutions of the 60s?

Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, there's a real continuity.

So we do have to thank our elders. It's just something to remind them of the millennials as well,

it's actually. Always. I mean, because none of us just starts as blank slates. We're coming in.

We're discussing ancient wisdom. We're coming in with everything that was

experienced, that explored and worked through and so forth in an earlier generation.

When we're born, that's already living within us. I noticed this all the time with younger students,

even back in 20, 30 years ago, right up to the present.

The students who were born after the 60s, it's almost as if they had been there and lived through

it and it integrated it. But now they're born at this later time. But the things that weren't

resolved back then are not resolved in them. The things that were kind of broken through to

and understood, they're often carrying it kind of with ease, almost as if it's like a starting

point, a legacy that's already living within them. So yeah, I think there really was a kind of

cumulative evolutionary continuity that goes from decade to decade and right up to the present.

But back to the point about the Renaissance, part of the major reasons that

astrology was exiled from the modern mind and became the gold standard of superstition

is that I think the modern self had a different task. The modern self was focused on, in a sense,

becoming more and more aware of itself as a free agent, as someone who could shape their lives.

Not being determined by the class they were born in, for example, or not, or the cast,

not being determined by the stars and have that fate already written out for them.

Gindas is another one. That's right. Exactly. And so what happened, I feel like in the course of

the modern era, it was very important to block out the idea that our fate is being determined by

the stars. And there are many intellectual reasons for refuting it because all the scientific

advances were showing a cosmos that was run by physical, natural principles that didn't have

like synchronicity was not part of the of the scientific equation. And there were no

spiritual meanings that could possibly be carried by these moving planets in relationship to the

earth. It didn't make any sense in terms of what we sometimes call the Newtonian Cartesian

paradigm. And so I think that that paradigm, that modern understanding and the impulse for the

modern self to attain a new sense of autonomy of its own agency, of its ability to shape itself,

its life, and even shape the world to some extent in a way that would reflect one's own values

and not the ones that were prescribed for one already. That was the that was an important task.

But now that that sense of selfhood is so well established. And in some ways it's run into a crisis

because in our intellectual hubris and technological lack of constraint, a global crisis is taking place,

climate change, and so forth. And as a result, there's there's a new openness, which I think

it relates to this question of why why millennia also in younger generations than my own are more

open to new possibilities. Well, when the old possibilities have shown themselves to be

quite problematic in certain ways, then there's a lot of reason to think that there could be

others came off of it. I couldn't help but reflect on just yeah, like how well a job you do

amazingly rigidism, sure, to much acclaim, in fact, of just balancing out the benefits of everything

that the Western, you know, modalities have given us. But then also the key challenges. It's not

just like it's all, you know, I think we run the risk at this point in the conversation. So I'm like,

oh my god, the Western well, but realistic, I just want to honor there's like a whole so much has

come from it, even what you were saying before suggested, I'm sure sovereignty is much bigger than

what I was alluding to, what I'm about to allude to, but there is this reclamation of sovereignty

as well, like women's rights, you know, like race and stuff and all this stuff sort of like, you know,

that Western sort of pursuit has actually healed many things in many ways, but in its wake it has

also opened up many wounds as well. So it's, you know, you don't get out of anything, Scott,

free in some ways, I think astrology holds a really good job actually in my humble opinion around

duality as well, because I feel like maybe our soul comes from a nonjewel space, I don't know,

but there are some nonjewel teachers. But then when you're in this jewel experience, I mean,

you've got poles in astrology, opposites in woods, outwards, and it's beautiful because many people

look at opposites in mainstream vernacular and go, oh, they're not of a kind, but actually as an

engineer to an astrologer, I mean, if I'm holding the South Pole and I'm holding the North Pole,

in this plane of view, absolutely, there's an opposite, but if I'm looking top down, you're actually

both holding the center, you know, so this concept of duality and like the alignment between an

astrology does an amazing job of speaking to that, you know, like Aries, one's individual relationship

with oneself and then Libra's like one's relationship with all the others, but it's still relating,

you know, there's like an access there. So the duality, it's almost like a map for duality in my mind,

I wanted to speak to you if I could about clarity. And if I can take you back to Esteline,

I know, I know it's like back to Esteline, yeah, back to Esteline, you're sitting there under the

night sky. And because I picked up somewhere along the way, I think you're in conversation with

a very dear friend and teacher Heather Nsworth here. And you were talking about there's a certain

clarity to the sun. Yeah, because in Vedic, they look at the sun as being somewhat

malefic, but in Western, the sun is benefit. And I find it really interesting looking at the

Eastern and the Western worldviews together. But it's anyway, another conversation for another

day. But you mentioned that the sun has a certain type of clarity for us, like it's luminous.

And during the day, like you see the sun, you see things clearly, there's a clarity that's

there for us. And then when the night comes, there's a different type of clarity. There is a light

and the moon rules the night, but you see so many other things much more clearly. And that night

and day, that light and dark, that shadow in a router, I think is a really, I just thought it was

super deep and poetic the way you put clarity, your concept on clarity. That's a good example

of an archetypal perspective that can open up a larger vision like that. Because basically,

once we recognize that, I mean, the sun rolls the day, the moon rolls the night. And during the

day, when the sun is shining, we see things, as you say, with clarity, there's a, and we can see

their, their, their separate objectivity, so to speak. And we get the details. And, and there's

a kind of factual clarity to everything. But there's just one light. It's brilliant. But it's like

the light of science or the light of the modern enlightenment, rationalist enlightenment, the

light of reason in the, in the Western modern sense. And, but when the night comes and the moon

is the ruler of the night, and the moon is the great symbol, not of just the moon. When the moon

is shining, you can see many lights. You can see many stars. There's not just the one light of the

moon, the way with the sun. The sun is so bright. It blocks out everything else. And, but at night,

you, even when the moon is shining, and even in the full moon, you can see many other stars,

and you see into the depths of space. So in some sense, the moon is the great symbol of the whole

cosmos. It's the mother matrix of, of the universe, so to speak. And while the, while the,

the sun is like the hero archetype, the solar hero, that's on a journey. It ascends, it shines

brilliantly. It brings progress and so forth. But then it descends. This is, this is the thing

about a strongly solar culture, is that it tends to keep thinking of the, it's always ascending.

But it can forget that the sun also has to descend, and it goes down, and it dies into the

night sky, so to speak. And it dies into the, into the lunar matrix of being. It dies into the

night sea journey that is part of the hero's journey. And it's a journey of dying,

transformation, and rebirth, so that there you, you basically have this opportunity for

the sun and moon and the sacred marriage to happen. The solar and the lunar, lunar in a, a sacred

marriage. And then the new dawn comes as the sun rises out of the darkness. And it's caring,

everything that it's learned through the night sea journey. And, and carried it. So the,

the night is pregnant with each day. And the day unfolds, but the, the day dies into the night.

The sun dies into the solar hero, has to go through a, a death that has to go through a,

the dying to the old identity, the old reality in order to give birth to the, to a new dawn,

and a, and a, a new, a new day. So that's, that's the basic thing that you were bringing up,

that I, I talked about with, with, with Heather, as you mentioned.

As we're talking about time and these cycles, I mean, we've, it's read a couple of times,

and we haven't addressed it. Can you speak to us of synchronicity, Richard, please?

So talking about synchronicity. So for many years astrology was often seen, first of all,

when it was mainly seen as those were the literal gods out there, then when events happened on

earth that seemed to reflect what was going on, you know, as above so below, it was just automatically

seen as that's the gods that are at work. The gods are just doing it. And so there was a kind of

causal energy that was coming from the, the gods' power in the heavens. And the great philosopher

Plotinus, who seems to have not, not only carried the Platonic tradition from out of ancient Greece,

Plotinus was the last of the great classical philosophers in the Greco-Roman,

you know, thousand year period. And he, he also seems to have been also influenced by the

wisdom of the East. It's a little unclear exactly how that influence happened, but it seems clear in

his, in, in much of his understanding. And, and Plotinus said something that's quite remarkable. He

said, the stars are like letters, which inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky, almost like a

language. And he said, everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All

things depend on each other. And then he, he says, as has been said, everything breathes together,

everything breathes together. I think that that is the exact description as, as eloquent a

description as I can think of as how synchronicity works. And that basically, so poetic.

Yeah. Yeah. And he, and he was really a very smart philosopher too, but he also could just have

this kind of poetry coming through. And, and that particular framing of how astrology could work,

it's because we live in a universe that is united, inner and outer above and below all the way down.

And we're not like separate entities in a meaningless cosmos. We're meaning seeking, meaning

creating expressions of a universe that is itself expressive of meaning and purpose and value

and so forth. That was going to be one of my questions for you today. Given this 21st century

crisis of meaning that we're swimming through, let's put that as, put that way, it seems quite

clear in today's podcast that astrology is something that you think can is deeply supportive.

And also psychedelics with sensible, like, you know, a provisional use. Let's just put it over.

And there are other modalities that you think are deeply useful in terms of navigating. I mean,

all your work at SLIN, I mean, what do you think at this particular moment in time as we are

going through this crisis of meaning? What are some of the key ropes in the forest that we can

vine onto, vine off of, swing around on that can actually help us navigate this jungle.

Well, one thing is, I mean, the crisis has been produced by modernity. Even though the modern

has brought many gifts, many breakthroughs, a great deal of emancipation, but it also has a huge

shadow and just the sun creates big shadows. And part of that shadow is that the modern and

Western mindset, marginalized, all these other cultures that have such wisdom in them.

Tribal indigenous traditions, Indian, Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist traditions, wisdom traditions

that we can deeply learn from. And each of us has a different journey to take. Each of us will

find different modalities, different philosophies, religions, practices to be right for us.

I think that's also part of the liberation of our eras, at least its possibilities, which is that

there's not like one cookie cutter answer that everybody's got to live according to.

And then it was meant to be.

That path is for your steps alone. Each of us has our own journey.

What I'm describing right here is that there's not one thing that's for everybody.

But I think, you know, I myself have been deeply nourished by Hindu and Buddhist and Taoist

mystical traditions and Sufi as well. And certainly astrology and sacred medicines of various kinds,

vision plants, psychedelics, ayahuasca and so forth. Each of those had been

major gifts in my life as they have been for many others. And of course, that's part of a very long

tradition in human history because indigenous tribal cultures and shamans and so forth. We're using

these vision plants and sacred medicines in rituals that were of great centrality for those

cultures, those societies. Modern civilization did not have adequate ritual containers when

LSD came in. And that's why the man who discovered LSD, Albert Hoffman, he said, I think the reason

that LSD, as he called it, my problem child, he said the reason it caused such havoc in our

civilization in the 60s and beyond is that people, the Western modern civilization did not have

adequate sacred containers rituals within which those powerful medicines could be safely

employed. So it's, but the sacred began recreation. Yeah, let's, yeah. And so there are great

many, like millennia of cultural traditions have carried that that we can learn from. Also,

indigenous cultures are much more attuned to the installed natural world around us and

can read it much more sensitively. So we can learn a lot from the other cultures

the could be Asian, African, South American, indigenous, mystical traditions,

esoteric traditions. We can learn from these that have been marginalized by the bright light

of modernity and put into the shadow because modern science and modern thought is so much more

sophisticated in the modern mind's point of view. And so part of the humbling

that I feel our civilization is going through is helping us open up to the fact that

we can learn a lot from everybody else that we didn't include in our confident assertion

of the modern world view. And really, when it comes down to, well, what can individuals do

to find their way through this liminal period or this global crisis that we're in?

One is to link up with others. Don't do it alone. Two, it's the, if you can find

larger communities of people who work with, I mean, they don't have to be a local community.

It could be an online community, but to have a community that can support a larger

vision of value of the good that is maybe distinct from the mainstream conventional society

that is just focused on profit and selling commercially to you through every possible way of

persuading the audience to buy their product and to basically have a higher vision. It takes

a community to hold a larger vision to help the individual be able to hold it as well.

Also, communities, as I mentioned earlier, can help an individual go through the difficult

challenges of a, of us finally, but besides attending to your dreams and being constantly curious

and attentive to synchronicities, attentive to what's happening around you as

signposts to how to live more skillfully, how to surf the waves more competently.

But beyond that, so much comes down to our personal relationships. How we relate to our loved ones,

our children, our parents, our partner, our friends, our enemies, every interaction that

you have with another person, including in the most private setting that you might think

has nothing to do with anybody else. It's just you two going through whatever an argument or

whatever. But if whatever you are able to work out in the privacy of your intimate relationships,

that ripples out into the world. It goes through the walls, so to speak. We're not

in these isolated echo chambers. You know, we're all presidents,

transfers. Yeah. Yeah.

So just paying attention to your relationships as being a field of activity where spiritual

growth can take place is very important.

You, as everyone can tell, like to go into places deeply. I mean, it's called

depth psychology for a reason. And you could have written about anything. But

Prometheus, I mean, is it, I mean, we're moving into an aquarium age now. And then it seems,

I wonder, is this a Prometheus in sort of time? Can you bring us into what made you want to focus

your attention here? And why is Uranus so central? I mean, so much of the governs very much. But

what was about this particular? Okay, so that was way back in 1978. And I suddenly

realized that what astrologers were constantly recognizing tends to happen in relationship to the

the planet Uranus is that it has to do with sudden breakthroughs, sudden insights,

change, but also inventiveness, novelty, innovation, originality, breakthroughs of creativity,

also rebelliousness, unpredictable events or behavior, kind of like a trickster archetype,

but also a rebel archetype and a liberator, like Prometheus who rebels against the old gods,

steals fire from the heavens, gives it to humanity to free it from its old constraints.

But it's also a trickster. He tricks the gods, et cetera, like Zeus in Greek myth. And all

mythologies typically have a trickster archetype, a trickster figure. And mythologies have a figure

who like with the trickster, the trickster is usually present at any creative moment, at any

at any major change. And all this was connected to the planet Uranus, but it suddenly hit me

that in Greek mythology that Uranus doesn't have a lot to do with sudden change or with liberation

or with rebellion, it's a sky god and has it's married to Gaia, the earth. And there's clearly,

it has its importance, and there's some relevance to the planet astrologically Uranus that is

connected with astronauts and space travel and aviation and so forth, the sky, the cosmos.

Yes, there's definitely a connection to the sky god, but in terms of all those other things,

those qualities that astrologers regularly observe with Uranus prominent and people's

poroscope, like Uranus rising, for example, or Uranus in a conjunction with a person's son,

something like that. All those qualities that astrologers observe in terms of rebelliousness,

genius, eccentricity, originality, evasion, potential.

Yes, also technology and scientific impulses, but anything that tends towards being drawn towards

the new, the young, the future. Okay, so all that is clearly embodied in the myth of Prometheus

and Greek culture and Greek mythology. Now there's other, that's been a very prominent mythic

figure in Western culture, but there are every, as I mentioned, cultural mythologies around the

world have similar figures who are creative, trickster figures and so forth, just with different

names. So the idea of the planetary archetypes, it's not that the Greeks are the Greek and Roman

names and mythologies have a lock on the true nature of the heavens. They are one of the

expressions of these archetypes, but the archetypes come through in all different cultures in different

ways. So, but just getting back to your question, that's why I was so compelled by the Prometheus

connection with the Rodus, because I studied, well, look at all, all the great Copernican,

the scientific revolutionaries who began the scientific revolution broke through the old

cosmology, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton. Every one of them had Uranus in major

geometrical alignment with the Sun. Every single one of them, again, taking a figure from earlier

popular culture, say Bob Dylan, Uranus, right on his Sun, you know, tremendously creative, rebellious,

etc. And at the same time, like women who have Uranus Sun, all the classic feminist figures,

you know, like Simone de Beauvoir or George Sondre or Gertrude Stein and so forth,

so there's just, I started looking and seeing how also when people were having their breakthrough

experiences in therapy, in psychedelic exploration, or even just sudden aha experiences that people

have out of the blue, where they suddenly understand a problem that they've been working with

for years, and then they suddenly get it. It coincides with transits of Uranus with such consistency

that I thought, this is really, I mean, that's why I have a special fondness for this particular

planetary archetype, keeping in mind that there's a shadow to every single archetype,

and the Pervitius Uranus energy can also be very destabilizing. It can get inadequately respectful

of tradition, of the elders, of order. Sometimes a tradition that is carrying a certain stabilizing

order in a culture is really valuable, while we want to reform and transform it in a healthy way,

just trying to pull the whole scaffolding out can have quite catastrophic consequences.

And that can be a bit of reverent, yeah. Exactly. And so that's a shadow side of

the Pervitian Uranian energy that we need to be conscious of. It does feel like, as you're

sharing all of that, does feel energetically archetypally, I should probably start saying,

as a sign of the times that we're in, is that too much of my conflating things?

Oh, no, no, I mean, it certainly, there's, in fact, there's almost been a kind of acceleration

of that archetype ever since Uranus was discovered, which was in 1781, discovered by telescope,

that period, at the height of the enlightenment, to the scientific revolutions that were happening,

the romanticism, the French revolution, and American revolution, or the democratic

revolutions, abolitionism, all those were just bursting onto the scene at the time that Uranus

was discovered. And from that time forward, it seems to have just gotten accelerated in the same

way that technological changes accelerated. New horizons are opening up so quickly right now,

it's very difficult to keep up with them. So that's, yeah, there's your spot on in terms of

that particular archetypal energy being quite emphatically present in our time.

I find it really, sorry, I'm part of me for the jest, but I mean, you did mention

tricks to Chester a little bit, but I find myself, even when I started, well, when I became

in astrologer, I was going through a Uranian shift at the time. And I find myself like laughing

because, as you're saying that, because I became in astrologer in a shorter amount of time,

then it took me to integrate the identity of becoming an astrologer. It all happened so fast

and naturally, touch wood. And then afterwards, I was like, I'm an astrologer now, like, when did

what? The suddenness of it. And I was like, I still had the rest of me had to catch up,

true to Uranus's Promethean nature. It was just like, it all happened. And then I was like,

but I was just the other day, I was an engineer. And then, you know, coaching, and then, but now

astrology. And it's like, what's next? I'm going to end up on a Himalayan mountain meditating

somewhere and just broadcasting silence for the broadcast, like I'm not sure. But it all

happened rather so suddenly and so fast. And then you're left picking up the pieces on the other

side as well, which I think is it's interesting to think consider that for the time that we're in

at large on mass collectively now together. Yeah, that's that's a perfect description of that

particular Promethean Uranian energy that coincides with Uranus transits.

And, and of course, there's something in your birth chart that responded to the moment, you know,

and that was awakened. It didn't come out of the blue. It was just waiting to be awakened in a set.

And so that's that's a very good example of it. And in fact, it's it's people very frequently

have an astrological awakening during Uranus transits. That's we see that a lot.

So you're you're right in the very much fitting the proper cosmic timing.

Touchwood as a as a different would say, right on time, Pam Gregory, right on time. And she holds

you in the highest of this team's Richard. I my goodness. I yeah, it's with the heavy heart that

I bring today's conversation to a close. I don't want to do it. But I have to say thank you so

much for yes, your time, your energy, your presence here today. Yeah, I can't help but feel like

the people that I deeply have respected and looked up to for such a long time, especially with

their astrological awarenesses and the dedications that they've put in decades upon decades upon decades

to the path, universally hold you, singularly in some of the highest esteem possible. And yeah, to

just pay their respects and mind onto you, it is such an honor to add you here today, Richard.

Anybody that picks up a single book of yours will quickly realize today's conversation is not

just a moment in time. It stands on the shoulders of your life's work and your life's work. I mean,

is through and through as you even described the birthplace of the books. Thank you so much for

sharing that with us today is sent so much upon the universe as it's presenting itself through you

and you giving the opportunity to sort of present the way that it does through you.

Thank you so much for all the years you've put into the work and held space for us to grow into as

well. And you know, we're all paying it forward in some ways, but I just want to honor and acknowledge

you really deeply for the being that you are. Thank you, Richard. Thank you very much. And thank you

for all you're doing to bring what's important into the world as you're striving to do. Doing the

best I can do.