​A co-creative approach to astrology characterizes the shifting of the zodiac age from Pisces to Aquarius. This quantum world view enables the sovereign individual to direct their destiny in accordance with the cycles of archetypal manifestation. Richard Tarnas sums up this paradigm shift in the galactic evolution of humanity:

 

I think in some ways astrology had to be negated by the modern mind and modern self at a certain point for modernity . . . and the modern self to emerge with sufficient autonomy that it could then re-engage the cosmos, an ensouled cosmos in a new way, a more co-creative, participatory way but in order to get to that point there had to be a kind of a loss, a negation, what was felt at first as a liberation from the old astrological ensouled cosmos but then eventually was experienced widely as a kind of state of alienation and disorientation and a cosmic void which to a certain extent characterizes the late modern and postmodern existentialist crisis.[2]

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As an Aquarian born with a natural (0° Aries Rising) chart under a Sun/Uranus mutual reception in a challenging horoscope with thirteen squares, no planetary trines, and an elevated Saturn/Mars conjunction in the ninth house (fig. 3), experimenting with the quantum approach to astrology was essential to develop the Self-mastery required for navigating in the world under such tensions and uncertainty.[3]

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This methodology was formalized over a period of nearly three decades in producing co-creative phenomenology as creative writer, art critic, curator, academic and artist. The private experiments gradually evolved into a professional capacity out of dedication to the personal exercise of surrendering ego to filter the cosmic plan, which became more evident with every project. This article provides an overview of the holistic process of following synchronicities into the unknown.[4] 

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With consciousness becoming aware of itself as the expressed goal, the challenge was to create a literary/visual aesthetic reflecting the ontology of Aquarian Being. Digital technology eventually furthered these twentieth-century avant-garde constructions into a new aesthetic, the Astro-Portrait™️. The goal was to establish a trajectory of celestial maps (the astrology chart) using bi-wheels of the original event with the solar return that introduced a new chapter (figs. 3-7, 9-10 and 12-13). These snapshots of time track the emergence of the hieros gamos archetype in the Third realm , beyond the right/left brain dichotomy.[5] Richard Tarnas describes this dimension in regard to western philosophy:

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This participatory epistemology, developed in different ways by Goethe, Hegel, Steiner, and others, can be understood not as a regression to naive participation mystique, but as the dialectical synthesis of the long evolution from the primordial undifferentiated consciousness through the dualistic alienation. It incorporates the postmodern understanding of knowledge and yet goes beyond it. The interpretive and constructive character of human cognition is fully acknowledged, but the intimate, interpenetrating and all-permeating relationship of nature to the human being and human mind allows the Kantian consequence of epistemological alienation to be entirely overcome.[6].

 

Characteristic of this novel approach to astrology are the Aquarius co-rulers Saturn and Uranus transmitting the Chiron holistic vision into the quanta of reconstituted holistic Being. Newly born from the ashes of postmodernism cynicism, the human is liberated to become enchanted with the world once again, this time as co-creator!

 

[1] “GaiaMind,” The GaiaMind Project, accessed October 27, 2024, www.gaiamind.com.

[2] Chris Brennan, The Astrology Podcast, episode 84, “Richard Tarnas on Cosmos and Psyche,” July 26, 2016, transcribed May 8, 2017, by Sheila Reynolds, https://theastrologypodcast.com/transcripts/episode-84-transcript-richard-tarnas-cosmos-psyche/.

[3] “Self” capitalized in this article reflects the Jungian term (“Self”) for the hieros gamos archetype. The implication is individual sovereignty through the marriage of the two Aquarius rulers: Saturn (responsibility) and Uranus (knowledge).

[4] “. . . Jung defined synchronistic events as an act of creation. A synchronistic event is an acausal event and is therefore, one could say, an act of creation.” Marie-Louise von Franz, On Divination and Synchronicity: The Psychology of Meaningful Chance (Inner City Books, 1980), 110.

[5] This article chronicles the astrology of the evolution of an art theory of the hieros gamos into a philosophy of the Third. The Third realm is the aether, as the fifth element or quintessence or philosopher’s stone, alchemical terms for the hieros gamos, Greek for the sacred marriage of Heaven and Earth. The twentieth century prophets C.G. Jung and Wolfgang Pauli agreed the hieros gamos is the icon of the Age of Aquarius. See Remo Roth, https://www.paulijungunusmundus.eu and Return of the World Soul: Wolfgang Pauli, C.G. Jung and the Challenge of Psychophysical Reality - Part II: A Psychophysical Theory (Pari Publishing, 2012). Roth refers to the Third as the unus mundus.

[6] Richard Tarnas, "Epilogue", The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View, accessed October 27, 2024, https://www.gaiamind.com/Tarnas.html.

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