Listen here:
What if the astrology of our time is revealing not only the challenges we face but the deeper evolutionary story unfolding beneath them?
In this fascinating conversation, Renn Butler joins the Astrology Hub Podcast to explore archetypal astrology, psychedelic healing, birth imprints, collective transformation, and the deeper psychological forces shaping both our personal lives and the world around us. Drawing from decades of study alongside pioneers like Richard Tarnas and Stanislav Grof, Renn shares how planetary archetypes may illuminate everything from trauma and healing to the major collective shifts humanity is navigating right now.
Renn also mentions that Richard Tarnas made the correlation between the first United States Uranus Return during the Civil War, and Lincoln's famous Inaugural speech, in which he said that every living heart in the Union will again be “touched . . . by the better angels of our nature.”
🎬 IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR:
00:00 — Renn Butler’s Journey into Archetypal Astrology
05:38 — Psychedelics, Consciousness & the Origins of Archetypal Astrology
12:46 — What Are Archetypes? Understanding the Forces Shaping Human Experience
19:14 — Integrating Archetypes: Healing, Growth & the Collective Psyche
22:43 — Birth Imprints, Trauma & the Difference Between Perinatal and Natal Astrology
36:56 — The Therapeutic Use of Psychedelics & Holotropic Breathwork
42:35 — From Personal Trauma to Ancestral & Collective Healing
47:53 — The Archetypes Defining Our Current Era: Uranus, Pluto & Humanity’s Future
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LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
Download the FREE Mid-Year Guide: https://astrologyhub.com/midyear
Connect with Renn Butler: https://www.rennbutler.com/
Renn’s upcoming course: https://www.rennbutler.com/online-cou…
Renn’s podcast interview on Holotropic Breathwork & Archetypal Astrology: • Renn Butler – Holotropic Breathwork and Ar…
BOOK: Pathways to Wholeness by Renn Butler: https://amzn.to/4d8i8DO
BOOK: Holotropic Breathwork by Stanislav Grof: https://amzn.to/3PFkroK
BOOK: Making the Gods Work For You by Caroline Casey: https://amzn.to/4ntQViv
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Renn Butler’s interest in self-exploration and understanding began as a young person in the 1960s when he was exposed to Jungian depth psychology and gestalt by his parents and their friends. Following a B.A. in English and Religious Studies from the University of Alberta, he lived at the Esalen Institute in California for 2½ years where he became deeply immersed in the transpersonal psychology of Stanislav Grof and the emerging archetypal astrology of Richard Tarnas. In 2022 he received my PhD from Ubiquity University in Archetypal Astrology and Transpersonal Psychology.
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“The universal mind never dies.” – Renn Butler
Transcript
[00:00:00] Amanda Walsh: Hello, my friends, and welcome to The Astrology Hub Podcast. Today, we have one of those guests where I find myself marveling about the fact that I've been interviewing incredible astrologers for almost 11 years. It's incredible to me that we can continue to find extraordinary astrologers who are at the top of the field, who have been doing this for decades, and today's guest is one of those people.
His name is Renn Butler. He has been studying, practicing, and teaching astrology for 47 years. He has written three books on astrology that are the kinds of books that, as Laura on my team says, one of his books is one that sits in her office every single day, and she references it all the time. It's one of those books that astrology students need to have really handy as they're learning, as they're giving readings, as they're [00:01:00] growing in the practice.
And he is also on his ninth year of bringing astrology students through his archetypal astrology training class. So I am so honored to have Renn Butler here with us today. Renn, welcome to The Astrology Hub Podcast.
Renn Butler: Oh, thank you. It's a—it's an honor to be here. Thank you very much.
Amanda Walsh: All right. So let's, because I always do this with—with the Astrology Hub debut episode, I love to get the backstory. How did you get to this place where you are now doing this for many, many decades? What's the story of getting there?
Renn's Story
Renn Butler: I was living in San Francisco with my mom after I graduated from high school, uh, for three months, and a friend of hers did my chart in—in, uh, um, early spring of 1978. Um, and it seemed, you know, it had numinous power. I remember being kind of, uh, scared of [00:02:00] certain parts, and this looked promising over here.
And then in, um, September '79, I discovered The Astrologer's Handbook by Sakoian and Acker, which turned out to be a real classic. And, um, I, um, someone had left it behind at—at my dad's farm, and, um, I've been into astrology every day since then, since September '79.
Amanda Walsh: So you were, like, 17, 18 years old when you had that reading?
Renn Butler: Um, I was 17 when I had my reading, yeah.
Amanda Walsh: Wow. I mean, this—this, I always reflect on this. Any of you who have children or y—you know, you never know the impact. Or if you give readings, you never know the impact that a great astrology reading will have on someone's life. Uh, Renn is living proof of it. I'm living proof of it. But that reading can just open something up.
And—and what was your experience of that? I mean, you said you were kind of scared of some things and, but w—were you open to it going in?
Renn Butler: [00:03:00] Her—her name was Annie Bones, I be—no, I, I, it was Annie something. I can't remember. Um, yeah, my mom was very interested in tarot already at this point and studied with Angeles Arrien, who wrote The Tarot Handbook. And, um, and I had grown up on a commune after my parents left the Mormon Church, so some very s—some similarities with your trajectory.
So I was already open to New Age ideas and, yes. But what really propelled it was when I got to Esalen in December '79 as a work scholar, and Rick Tarnas approached me and said hello, 'cause I had mentioned something in my application, um, well, I have trines in the houses of work, you know? I was trying to sell myself as a hard worker.
And, uh, and he was interested in that, so he—he took me under his wing, and we had many fascinating conversations over the course of [00:04:00] that year and then since. In the 1980s, we were in communication, like, virtually nonstop, you know, very frequent. And, um, I was eagerly ex—received everything he—said and wrote and read some of his manuscripts, and that was a very lucky break.
I also got to meet Rob Hand, um, at a weekend workshop in July of—of 1980, and that was a—another mind-blowing experience, really.
Amanda Walsh: Had some other pretty incredible mentors. Can you name a couple others that the audience might be familiar with?
Renn Butler: I have the high—highest, uh, opinion of her. Just she's sophisticated, deep. You know, psychological astrology is the closest cousin to archetypal astrology. It's our closest sibling, the psychological astrology school. Um, um, Dane Rudhyar had an influence on me. [00:05:00] Um, more recently Caroline Casey I just think is incredible.
Her—her one book, and you only have to write one book when you can write a book like that. I think that book has more human wisdom in it than any single book ever written. The only com—the only competitor for me would be Grof's The Cosmic Game.
Amanda Walsh: Hmm. Mm, mm. And which Caroline—Caroline Casey book?
Renn Butler: Caroline W. Casey. Uh, she has a podcast, and she wrote, uh, Making the Gods Work for You.
Amanda Walsh: Yes. I—I listened to the audio version of that and just loved it. It was amazing. Yeah.
Renn Butler: Truly astounding. Yeah.
Archetypal Astrology & Psychedelics
Amanda Walsh: So let's talk about archetypal astrology, and we've had Rick Tarnas on the podcast several times. He also taught a class with us. He's incredible. But from your perspective, what is archetypal astrology? How's it different than other types of astrology? Let's start there.
Renn Butler: Yeah. Well, Tarnas, uh, moved to Esalen in the early '70s to [00:06:00] work on his PhD dissertation under the auspices of Grof on psychedelic therapy, and, you know, Grof had been looking for years to find a way to predict the content of people's psychedelic experiences. He and his colleagues had looked various, like the DSM categories, the, you know, Rorschach tests and, and others, MMPI.
And when a visiting astrologer offered to show them how to cast charts and look at transits, they—they were both skeptical, but they were willing to suspend their disbelief, and they—they gave it a try. And, uh, much to their astonishment, they were able to see the broad contours of the experiences in—in psychedelic and holotropic states of consciousness.
So that was ironic for Grof because the one thing that could actually—it was, he ca—calls it the—the, um, Rosetta Stone of the human psyche that [00:07:00] can, you know, illuminate the experiences of our inner lives so—so, uh, incisively, turned out to be even more out beyond the fringe of the mainstream than psychedelics.
So it—it didn't catch on right away, as you can imagine. Um, I, I… My first book is called, uh, Pathways to Wholeness, uh, and it was the first book to—to look at their research in a systematic way, and also I added in many session reports, um, that I collected over the years as…
Amanda Walsh: Can you go into that a little bit more? So what you're saying is when people are having a psychedelic therapeutic session, that the content of the experience they're having correlates with the astrological transits of that moment, maybe a—a natal position or a—a—a planet in transit, both. Can you tell us [00:08:00] more about…
Renn Butler: Right, a transit. Um, a—a position of a, you know, planet in the sky now lighting up a natal position. Um, and because in psychedelic states or holotropic states—Grof coined this term, it means moving toward wholeness. Holos is wholeness from the Greek, tropein, moving toward like a heliotropic plant moves toward the sun.
It's the natural property in our psyches to heal us, to eject traumatic imprints from the past, and to move us toward a reawakening to our divine nature, which is what your work is all about. Um, and so the most that we can do is to cooperate with that process. Um, so, um, yes, it—it's fascinating. There are so many nuances that—that we can look at, like types of emotions, types of energies, the intensity at a given time, [00:09:00] all kinds of aesthetic, uh, nuances of, like types of visions we might have, color, um, mental flows of imagery, uh, or types of thoughts we might have, uh, types of aggressive feelings we might have, types of, um, suffering we might have, the quality of our breakthroughs and openings and illuminations.
So i—it's very, very rich. And y—you did ask the—the question, uh, um, you know, about how does it differ from other schools. So integration of Grof's work would be a very important part of it. I mean, psychological astrology, it had a quantum leap when it integrated Jung's work. Before Jung, astrology was kind of i—in a gray area between fortune-telling and—and self-exploration or self-knowledge, right?
It was more toward the fortune [00:10:00]-telling end. After Jung, then most astrologers now think astrology has a lot to say about our psyche and our individuation process, our movement toward wholeness. Um, the integration of Grof's work, i—in my experience, is another quantum leap. Grof's, um, you know, he sat for 4,000 individual high-dose psychedelic sessions, individual sessions with patients and journeyers, and that's a lot of data, a lot of research.
So he was able to s—see that psychedelics can act something like the—the telescope in astronomy and the microscope in biology for illuminating the contents of the psyche. So he—he saw a lot, and he—his work doesn't contradict Jung's in any way. It—it just fleshes out a couple missing areas, uh, more emphasis on the perinatal layer, the birth—birth and death, rebirth, uh, [00:11:00] archetype.
So th—so that's a very important part. We—we focus, uh, on aspects and transits, and that includes midpoints. So the—for us, the signs and the houses would be like a secondary or tertiary symbol systems. The core meanings would be reflected in the alignments between the planets, um, you know, aspects. And—and that also bypasses the problem of the different house systems and the different zodiac systems, right? Sidereal, because an aspect is exactly the same in any system that, you know. So that…
Wider orbs—Tarnas observed wider orbs, and, you know, our experience is that those wider orbs are like calibrating the archetypal telescope with just the right numbers that suddenly things click and things come into focus. You can look back at cycles in history, like Rick wrote about in Cosmos and Psyche, and [00:12:00] also look at people's sessions, dreams, experiences in everyday life. Um, and then the final one is, um, multivalence. Rick emphasizes this. We don't observe that, you know, a planetary alignment can give you exact information about the concrete manifestation of—of that aspect.
It gives you a range of thematic possibilities, um, both positive and shadow, and it's up to our—our free will and our relationship with our unconscious, you know, and—and so on to—to inflect it in its most positive forms.
Amanda Walsh: Hmm.
Renn Butler: So—so that's—that's a long answer, but I thought your—your viewers would be interested.
What Are Archetypes?
Amanda Walsh: Definitely. So can we talk a little bit about archetypes themselves? What are they? I mean, are they just these stories, like, these energetic stories that we are living out [00:13:00] in the human form? Like, what are they, and where do you believe they even originate from, and what is the purpose of them?
Renn Butler: Well, in the perennial philosophy, you know, the mystical traditions of around the world all have basic agreements about certain things, about the creation of the world and the universe. So the—the—the universal mind for various reasons wants to create physical universe or multi-cosmos universes, and it first divides itself into dualities and polarities like light and dark and—and pain and—and joy and so on, and then further differentiates and partitions it—parts of itself into semi-aut—autonomous beings that can then interact with each other and with the divine.
And archetypes represent a kind of a midway position between [00:14:00] the u—the unitive universal mind and the world of form, you know, the 10,000 things. So we could say that the Venus archetype represents the universe's impulses toward love, beauty, harmony, friendship. Jupiter, its impulses toward largeness, uh, expansiveness, uh, higher integration.
Uranus, its impulses toward breakthroughs, freedom, awakening out of constricted states and back into an awareness of the divine nature. So it's like a 10-handed clock, right? These, the Sun, Moon, and eight planets are moving at different speeds, and then they—they interact with each other, and then that corresponds to the interaction between those archetypes in our experience.
Yeah, so, um, the—the ancient Greeks and many other traditions [00:15:00] saw the archetypes as deities, so goddesses and gods. So we could call that the Homeric way of seeing archetypes. Plato reconceived them as metaphysical essences, so something is beautiful to the extent that the archetype Beauty, capital B, exists within it, or something is true to the archetype that the archetype of the true, and same with the archetype of the good, and so on.
And then Jung re—sort of saw the archetypes primarily as organizing principles in our psyches. The psychological organizing principles and—and instincts and so on. And, um, later in his life through his study of synchronicity, he ex—expanded his understanding of archetypes to include events in the world too, not just in the psyche.
Um, through, uh, um, so archetypes are—are all three of those. They're, [00:16:00] they're like deities. They're—they're essences. There's—they're in us, they're all around us, and there's always an interplay between our psyches and the outer world.
Amanda Walsh: Hmm. Do you believe… So our, we have our natal chart, right? And there's a certain configuration within that chart, and maybe more natural access to certain archetypes based on our chart, right? Do you believe ultimately we're here to experience all of it, or to kind of cultivate all the different archetypal energies and be able to call on them at will, for example? Or do you believe that we come here to really express the certain ones that are written in our chart?
Renn Butler: Um, I—I think all of them. Um, some of the archetypes are m—more or less pleasant and positive all the time, right? I mean, [00:17:00] Venus has a shadow side, but it's just, you know, too much of a good thing, like having a third ice cream cone or something like that. It's not really an evil force. A—and, and, you know, Jupiter has a shadow side, and so on.
But the shadow ones, the ones most, with the highest percentage or ratio of shadow qualities are, you know, Pluto, Saturn, and Mars, right? And I, in order to work with those, I th—I believe that entering holotropic states or psychedelic states in a responsible way, you know, with like, with tr—with, uh, experienced sitters or therapists, i—is one way to give the negative sides of those archetypes full expression in the session.
Um, and then that decreases or eliminates the effects of that negative part of that archetype in our everyday life. So [00:18:00] if there's a s—there's a quite a bit of uniqueness in—in all of our charts, right? So I mean, you know, you—you—you have re—lots of particular gifts like your, you know, Sun-Venus, for example, and your—your Mercury-Jupiter-Neptune, and your—your Moon-Neptune, and so on.
Um, b—And, and that will go down as far as the—the birth process, that uniqueness and individuality. But if we explore deeply within our psyches, we get to places where by definition we share those archetypes. That's the collective unconscious that Jung talked about. So you could say that everyone has everything inside of them. So sooner or later, if you do systematic self-exploration, you will experience everything. And so it starts out as a kind of individual and then becomes more universal. So…
Amanda Walsh: How do you—how do you—how do you or do you not [00:19:00] integrate archetypes that have been, uh, introduced into our awareness through things like Chiron or some of the, the, uh, you know, asteroids or w—how do you integrate that or not into the way that you practice?
Integrating Archetypes
Renn Butler: Well, that's an issue. Um, w—we don't have any boundaries around that. I know R—Rick didn't use Chiron and, uh, or, and the asteroids weren't really popular when—when he first started doing his work. My own feeling is that the meanings of both Chiron and of the asteroids already exist in the combinations of the Sun, Moon, and planets.
Um, for example, um, you know, the—the Roman names for the planets, the Greco-Roman planets, most of them are masculine, but that was the bias of the Greco-Roman civilization. The archetypes themselves are just as much feminine as masculine, all of—all of them, and I've—I've [00:20:00] suggested some alternate names for all the 10 major archetypes.
Um, so I think that is the most important, uh, direction in reintegrating the—the archetypal feminine at the head table of the goddesses and gods is—is—is realizing that the names were—were biased. But that said, um, I think that the universal mind probably spreads its meaning through many layers of astrology and different symbol systems, so both can be true, you know?
But, but for Chiron—um, and you have a grand trine with your Chiron, if I'm not mistaken—um, the, you know, the wounded healer is… could be seen as an interplay of Saturn and Uranus too, right? Like, Saturn is our wounds and Uranus is—is gifts that come out of [00:21:00] it. So, and Chiron has meaning too, so it's like overlapping layers of symbolism.
Renn's Reading Style
Amanda Walsh: Hmm. When you do a reading, are you looking at the signs and houses? I—I know you said secondarily, but do you mainly do your reading at this sort of archetypal level with the planets themselves, and the aspects?
Renn Butler: Yeah. There's so much information there. It's so rich. You can—you know, I can easily talk for an hour and a half just about aspects. If I'm doing a longer reading, then I would start bringing in the signs and houses. And, uh, and I would especially bring in the signs if, if the sign meanings either confirm or modify the essential aspect meanings.
Amanda Walsh: Mm. Mm. Wow.
Renn Butler: Yeah.
Amanda Walsh: I love what you said before about how that really transcends the conversation and the debate and the argument about which zodiac system's [00:22:00] right, which house system is right. How do you do that with, uh… Like, do you still see importance on the angles? You know, do—do you still put more importance if something's on the ascendant or descendant or MC or IC?
Renn Butler: Yes. Yes. Those are very important points. Um, um, any planet a—ligned with one of those points will be ac—centuated in and of itself, and then also, of course, the ascendant-descendant axis would inflect it towards relational qualities, as you know, and—and the IC-Midheaven towards home and career, uh, polarity.
But more importantly than that, it would be—it would just accentuate that planet in our experience. Yeah.
Perinatal vs. Natal Imprints
Amanda Walsh: Let's talk a little bit more about something you brought up earlier around perinatal, and what… Because I, you all, I had the, uh, opportunity to listen to an interview that Renn gave, like, seven years ago, and [00:23:00] actually, we could probably link it in—in the show notes, because it's so good. But, uh, one of the things that you talked about, and I was really resonating with, is the prenatal experience and the—and the imprint that that creates, and then also the actual birth experience and the imprint that that creates. So can you tell us what you've been able to discover through your research around this?
Renn Butler: Sure. How about if I show a graphic while I'm talking? Would that be okay?
Amanda Walsh: Great. Yes. And if you're listening on the podcast, you can always go—go on over to our YouTube channel if you wanna look at this, uh, visual that Renn's gonna share.
Renn Butler: Okay. Well, so I'll just show this one first because, um—it, it's up, but so I created this, uh, last month, and this is the Central Telesterion of Eleusis, the temple where they did the, uh, sacred ergot ceremonies, a naturally occurring form of [00:24:00] LSD. And for 1,900 years, this site had these sacred rituals.
Um, so this is about birth, so just to tie in with what, what, with your question. Sorry for the slight, uh, um, tangent. Um, and every Greek-speaking person was invited to come participate, and this was the most important religion, uh, religious site in the entire Mediterranean. It was… It focused on—on mother and daughter, and the—the daughter who goes into the earth and then is reborn, so death and rebirth.
And it's very interesting that in the Christian era, the, the central mytho, m—mythos or meaning was Father and Son, and we c—we clearly are moving into an era where it needs to be mother and daughter and—and father and son, all. You need to… A more holistic, but th—this was an experiential. So I've got this in the Moon-Uranus [00:25:00] chapter of my new book 'cause it's the rebirth of the—of the daughter, of the feminine.
So the perinatal layer of the psyche, Grof found that th—this is the—is deeper than the biographical layer. And when—when self-exploration continues, you know, people work through traumas from infancy to the present. Um, and then it eventually deepens into experiences of death and birth, which he calls the perinatal layer.
Um, and he found that the—the perinatal experiences tend to emerge in four clusters of experience, calls them the Basic Perinatal Matrices or BPMs. So the first one is based on the union with the mother, amniotic universe, and pe—this opens out into experiences of heaven and paradise in—in—in good womb situations.
And Rick was able to see that this corresponds in many ways to the archetype of [00:26:00] Neptune: no boundaries, openness to spirituality, the oceanic, you know, amniotic, um, milieu, and so on. Um, the… And then there can also be toxic womb, uh, leftovers, uh, if the mom was unsupported or was using drugs or alcohol or was—was sick, uh, or things like that beyond her control.
That's also related to Neptune, and that—that's part of the reason I believe why Neptune has gotten kind of a bad reputation in some branches of astrology because of these unhealed toxic womb leftovers. F—for us in archetypal astrology, Neptune is the most blessed of all the planetary archetypes.
It's, it's the goal. It's what we most deeply yearn for is states of unity, of reconnection with the divine, divine feminine, divine masculine. And so th—those can be [00:27:00] healed, y—you know, in—in breathwork and—and psychedelic therapy sessions.
Then the—um, early stage of labor with the cervix still closed, there's a sense of no exit, entrapment, encagement. There can be feelings of loss, of helplessness, hopelessness, a very powerful clinical root of depression Grof found, that again can be healed if people feel it deeply and surrender to these leftovers that consumes them from the psyche. And Rick was able to see the correlation with one of the facets of Saturn.
Saturn has positive sides too, right? But the, the feeling of, uh, boundaries, of being separated, of being in pain, of no way out—um—so th—this is very interesting information that we can help our clients if we can encourage them, you know, if they're going through Saturnine experiences, that the root of this [00:28:00] could be leftovers from the birth process, and we might want to just dive right in and face that material in sessions in—in safe ways.
Then the dynamic stage of labor with the cervix now open and the slow propulsion down the birth canal, and, uh, powerful uterine contractions, as you know, that alternate between 50 and 100 pounds of force. Um, the f—the fetus' frail head is being sort of pressed through the narrow birth canal. There's activation of enormous aggressive energies, um, when people relive this.
Um, there can be sexual feelings which are based on the, uh, the constriction of the blood vessels. The, th—that are, the, the arteries wound through the uterine walls feed into the vein that goes into the fetus' heart. And so during every contraction, that cuts or con—stricts the flow of [00:29:00] oxygen-carrying blood to the fetus.
And all of those qualities, including, uh, well, death, rebirth, struggle, and sense of titanic, uh, battles and so on, part of the aggressive side of it, are known to be connected with Pluto, like the shadows, you know, uh, uh, nausea, scatological s—uh, fixations, and so on. So Pluto is the planetary archetype we're probably handling the most poorly in our materialistic civilization, and that's—that's really what you're writing about i—in a way is this trying to live in this engineered world on top of the paved over psyche, and that also paves over our soul and the fertile, fecund depths of our psyche that can s—solve problems for us and help solve problems in the world and so on.
So Pluto is the one that really is best [00:30:00] if we have access to these r—esponsible psychedelic therapy or—or breathwork where we can let those wild energies come out of our psyches. And then, and then finally, the intensification of pressure and then sudden explosive liberation as the fetus crowns a—nd the newborn comes out of the birth canal, um, and there's, uh, images of blinding white or golden light, of peacock feathers, the inside of giant halls and cathedrals that depict the decompression of space, that the head it has been jammed into the birth canal and now suddenly that, that pressure is off.
Uh, there can be, um, images of the connecting with the great mother goddess or reconnection or with God or the divine in a more abstract form like radiant light. Um, and there's feelings of forgiveness, salvation, redemption, atonement, [00:31:00] enlightenment are connected with this. And Rick was able to see that all of those qualities are connected with Uranus.
And the negative side of the Uranus archetype from the literature—uh—probably originated, Amanda, in—in my view, because, um, it's harder to suppress our unconscious contents during Uranus transits. This—this is the, the, Uranus is the cosmic midwife and—and it could be called Persephone just as much as Ura—uranus or—or Prometheus, as Rick suggests.
Persephone is just a beautiful goddess from our collective past, still in us though, and, you know, coming back. Um, that's the cosmic midwife pulling our consciousness back toward the divine, and it's harder to suppress what's inside of us, so then—then things start breaking, you know? Instead of breakthrough, as you talk about, it's like a breakdown, [00:32:00] right?
So it's better to cooperate with that opening process, and then Uranus transits become fantastically emancipatory. Like, I want as m—any Uranus and Neptune transits as I can possibly get all the time. I look forward to them all. But if you, if you have access to the deep work, you, you come to value all the transits and you, like Stan used to say—Stan Grof—he, he knew he could work through more karma, so he didn't mind doing sessions under the difficult transits.
Amanda Walsh: What happens if there's a C-section and some of these—these, uh, natural processes get bypassed?
Renn Butler: Right. So an elective cesarean is quite different. You, you go straight from the BPM one to BPM four. So you, you bypass the tr—these traumatic p—layers of the birth, like, you know, the scrunching and the suffocation and so on. [00:33:00] So people might have easier access to mystical states, but they might also lack the, the endurance and tenacity that results from going through these difficult experiences and then escaping from them.
And Grof feels that was necessary for our Stone Age ancestors to give us the toughness and the optimism to endure the difficult conditions, 'cause we had already endured something much worse and then survived it. Um, so an, an emergency cesarean, the—the—the fetus would be in e—this stage or this stage, and then they get rescued. And so that one—that's much closer to a, a vaginal delivery, and so it's not that much of a difference psychologically. It, it's much closer to—to—to the nor—usual. Yeah, but isn't this a beautiful [00:34:00] thing, the—the way it's one flowing thing?
Amanda Walsh: No, that's amazing. Would you say that the process of birthing anything, so not just a child, but a book, for example, or a business, or some sort of project, do we go through these… Is this just the stages of birth, period, that h—accompany any major, uh, birth of anything into the world?
Renn Butler: I think so. I think so, and you know, those four major archetypal flavors or themes, you know, of the Neptune, Saturn, Pluto, Uranus are always happening in us in various combinations. So yes. And also, any unresolved birth trauma that we have will tend to make the process more difficult. So, you know, like people might have trouble finishing things because they haven't [00:35:00] reached the completed birth in their memory system yet.
They're more under the influence of the period of being stuck, and so they, they can't complete things. And so it is a very powerful template for how we approach life. Uh, and we tend to overreact to things because it reminds us of things from our u-unhealed part of our psyche and, you know, react inappropriately. Also selectively perceive. You know, things could be pretty good, but we still see them as negative because we have these unhealed leftovers.
Amanda Walsh: Let's talk about the therapeutic use of psychedelics.
What the Therapeutic Use of Psychedelics Looks Like
Amanda Walsh: What does that look like? What does that not look—look like? What have you seen as the benefits to it in the research that you do, in the sessions that you facilitate, et cetera?
Renn Butler: Yeah. So I'm certified in—in—in Grof Breathwork, and we do workshops up here in Victoria, and I've done a few in other locations as well. And Grof and Christina Grof—Stan and Christina—developed the Holotropic Breathwork/Grof Breathwork as a substitute for his earlier psychedelic work, so it's very, very similar.
He—he found that there's a finite amount of trauma in the individual layer of our psyche. There's a finite amount of fear, of aggression, of, uh, the roots of insatiable greed, you know, this feeling of dissatisfaction. [00:38:00] And, and as I said, this is software in the brain, not something that is innately part of—of the human psyche.
And so by a process of abreaction or catharsis, we can expel these negative leftovers from our psyche by doing a series of sessions, which starts usually with traumas from infancy to the present. You know, physical and sexual abuse, uh, severe toilet training, sibling rivalry, hostile family atmosphere.
Also, um, major illnesses, operations or accidents. This is something new that Grof was able to—well, saw that hasn't really been integrated yet in mainstream psychotherapy. These leave a trace in the psyche as well that can be work through. And then the perinatal layer. Um, and there's a—a threshold of healing that happens when we work through most of our biographical material, and then another one most of our, you know, our perinatal material.
And so it is very beneficial to let the bad things come out. [00:39:00] And—and ther—many therapists don't have the optimism that Grof and Jung had, because they were able to go through darkness in both their own journeys and their patients and come out the other side. So that creates a sense of optimism about the process.
But m—many therapists who are working with milder activating techniques like, you know, talk therapy, which has its place, um, just might feel like you don't wanna go into these rooms in the house. It's just too dark. Don't go into the trapdoor into the basement. There's, there's a lot of myths about that, right? Fairy tales. But they always end up going into that room, right? In the fairy tale. They open the one door they're not supposed to go, and then it works out after, you know, the shit hits the fan for a while, so. But then it—but then they get through that. So when we expel the negative things from our psyche, it [00:40:00] makes more room for the good to come in.
And in these sessions, you will always find good wins over the darkness. If—if we haven't—if we don't feel good, it's not the end yet, you know? And so, um, you go through a number of sequences of that, and then you gradually widening the pathway to the divine to come in. And so it tilts the ratio of happiness to prob—you know, unhappiness in our lives.
It m—may not be a hundred percent of the time, but, you know, it can really, um, be an improvement. And then there's even more healing at the transpersonal layers that can be affecting us like ancestral, racial, collective memories or different archetypes, uh, past life experiences. They can have a direct, uh, effect on symptoms in our everyday life [00:41:00] that resolve and hun—completely disappear when we face that memory or experience.
We're also helping to resolve karma for the l—for collective humanity as a whole in some of them. And, and it's impossible to prove it, but it subjectively really feels that way. So that's a really beneficial part of this. We, we need as a species to turn some of our attention back now toward the traumatic past of our species, all the wars and genocides. And—and—and begin to heal those leftovers. That will help us to cooperate in the present, and for groups to forgive each other and to be willingness to be forgiven.
Amanda Walsh: You—you talk about a finite amount of—of material personally for people. So a finite amount of fear, a finite amount of grief, or a finite amount [00:42:00] of—uh—guilt, you know, these—these kinds of things that we experience. When people reach the end of that, is it then… Okay, two questions. One, is it obvious? Like, do they—uh—uh—do—does their life change such that it is—uh—undeniable? And then also, do we then just shift into ancestral collective—uh—you know, carried through our DNA kind of trauma? A—and is there a way to tell the difference?
From Personal to Ancestral Trauma
Renn Butler: Yes, there are, there are thresholds of feeling that happen, um, and yes, you can tell. Now, I have not completed all my perinatal leftovers. I was a pretty hard case. Uh, thirty-six-hour labor and, and a lot of the, like rejecting womb before that, and then a lot of trauma in my childhood too. So, um, so— [00:43:00] But I am much more healed than I was. Um, uh, but everyone that he worked with systematically eventually was able to com—complete the perinatal leftovers, and then they reached a threshold of healing that then ma—maintained after that.
So even though you're working through transpersonal sources of like negative experiences, including phylogenetic memories and things like that, um, your level of healing isn't affected. You're, you're, you're healed basically, but you're still processing things that the universe is pushing up. Um, you are now living in the eternal and infinite field of the universal consciousness.
Y—you've reawakened to that. The shell that is pressed on us during birth of separateness has been exploded open, and now you're back in the infinite and eternal, [00:44:00] uh, web or field of consciousness. And, and that's permanent because the universal mind never dies, you know. It's infin—infinite and eternal, the, the mystics all describe, so…
Amanda Walsh: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I ask that for the people who feel like that shadow work element is just never done. You know, even—even when you're feeling like, “Oh, I—I feel like I've moved beyond that one,” it—it can be re-triggered or it can come up in a new way, but your, your reaction is the same. So I'm just… That's—that's hopeful and helpful to know that…
Renn Butler: Yeah. And Carolyn Casey has a good, uh, comment about that. It, it—um—when that happens, it's not that we were done, it's that we were almost done, and so the universe has given us more. But honestly, like there's a lot of material inside the human psyche, and doing—like we can't talk it [00:45:00] away. Like the, a lot of these traumas are pre-verbal. They're so powerfully emotional and energetic, you have to go through it emotionally. So pe—people might have more in there that they—they don't even know yet, you know.
Amanda Walsh: Emotionally and somatically, right, Renn? Like, it, it, you… Feeling it in the body. Right. Yeah.
Renn Butler: Stored in our tissues and some… But…
Amanda Walsh: Yes. Yes. Okay. Fascinating. I could talk to you forever. Like, this is…
Renn Butler: So fun. Really enjoying this. I hope I'm not speaking at too much length, but, um…
Amanda Walsh: Because I think it's really easy to go, for anybody listening to this, to go A, how they birthed their own children, but then also B, how they were birthed. And—and start to think that… And—and maybe even start to blame that, those processes for the ills in our life and, you know, the certain patterns that we're struggling with. What you just said about the perfection of the design [00:46:00] even in that what seems like imperfection of the experience, and what it was—the gifts of that.
Renn Butler: Yeah. Well, I mean, these imprints do have a huge effect on us, so it can be a little daunting as we're approaching them in our exploration. But at a—as we're going through it, we—we learn to take responsibility for our experiences. That's easier to do when they're being healed. And we realize that there—somehow karma from different str—transpersonal streams are funneling into the details of our obstetric experience, and it's not a mistake, it's not an accident.
It's a chance for us to have that experience, and it's, it's humbling, you know, and, uh, all the gifts that come from suffering, right? It, you know, builds character and so on. And all's well that ends well, so when we can heal it, then we—we go, “Okay, um, [00:47:00] that happened, and that needed to happen.” So…
Amanda Walsh: Yes, yes. Okay, so let's talk about these archetypes alive in—in a context that people might be able to relate to. What—what struck me about listening to that interview you did seven years ago is it was prior to 2020. So it was prior to Saturn and Pluto conjunction. It was prior to all that huge astrology that we went through in 2020.
But you were targ—talking archetypally about what that period of time would—would signify for us, what it would—what it would give us the opportunity for, without yet knowing what it was gonna be. So it was fascinating to listen to you then. So I'd love to hear you talk about the period of time we're in right now, including what—what was kicked off in 2020, what we're experiencing right now in 2026 from an archetypal perspective.
Archetypes of Our Current Era
Renn Butler: Yeah. Well, we were in that Uranus square Pluto from about 2007 till 2021, and that [00:48:00] includes January 6th and this wild events there. And that also corresponded to the Saturn-Pluto conjunction. Those three together can have an especially brutal and kind of, uh, cataclysmic effect. We are now in Uranus trine Pluto.
The first month this came in orb was when Biden signed the—the big bill to—to support the transition to renewable energy, which is so essential. We need this. And that was—uh—worth spending that money on, and that was worth the inflation for people. I just wanna make that point to people. You're hearing a lot of opinions out there. Climate change is real, and we need to make this transition, so that was the beginning of the Uranus trine Pluto, that August, uh, like a few years back. And that will go till, uh, 2033.
So it's the energies of the '60s again, the—the [00:49:00] evolutionary Pluto and revolutionary Uranus archetypes, but in a flowing trine. And the last time this happened—uh—Becca Tarnas pointed out in a conversation, was during the—the Roaring '20s, when the—the foot went on the gas in so many directions, uh, in feminism, in the flappers, and erotic emancipation. Um, also, you know, technological breakthroughs and then also the greed, the Wall Street greed, which culminated in 1929 with the—the collapse.
Um, so we can expect everything opening up at this point. Um, you know, the billionaires are making more billions, and the psychedelic renaissance is—is continuing, so e—verything is opening. That's one of the major transits. The other one is the Saturn-Neptune conjunction. Now, for us, [00:50:00] that's a three-year transit, and we're now two, two-thirds of the way through it.
That can be demoralizing, can be depressing at times. Um, it's not the best transit for, like, heroic psychedelic approaches. It's better for incremental, more clinical approach, where you have therapists or sitters supporting you and doing it in a kinda step-by-step, careful way. Um, the collapse of the dream—um—you know, can sort of fit that Neptune-Saturn as well, but it—it—it grounds our spirituality.
It—it helps us to work through bypass tendencies we might have, which is one of the shadows of the New Age, which is—uh—a fantastic development overall, and kinda come down to Earth and face our pain. So Neptune dissolves the boundaries around whatever it touches, and in this [00:51:00] case, it's our Saturnian fear and pain. Not the only things associated with Saturn, but so it's harder to suppress them. So they tend to leak up into everyday life in a sense of kind of morose disillusionment or discouragement.
But by feeling them, we're actually consuming them out of our psyche. All we have to do to get rid of a negative feeling is feel it fully, and that really helps with those most difficult of emotions.
Amanda Walsh: Hmm.
Renn Butler: So—
Amanda Walsh: Hmm. What happens when we're out of the orb of Saturn-Neptune?
Renn Butler: Well, well, the—the end of this decade should be very special with the—uh—Uranus trine Pluto still happening. We're coming up to a Saturn-Pluto alignment again, but, you know, the conjunctions and oppositions are the strongest. So, um, I—I—I would feel pretty happy that we're coming through that Saturn-Neptune, and I think there's been a—a brush [00:52:00] with totalitarianism and—and—and—uh—in—in many countries of the world recently, and I—I sort of see that as one last kick at the can for the old macho ethnocentric mindset and sort of greed is good mentality.
Greed and aggression are the two biggest problems facing humanity, and both of them have strong perinatal roots, you know, that's contributing to it. And, uh, I—I think that—uh—as Abraham Lincoln said, you know, we will rediscover the better angels of our nature. And the—the United States has been in a Pluto return, and so with these wider orbs, you know, we're still in that, but we're about three-quarters of the way through.
Um, so there's been this upsurge of—of—you know, greed and—and—aggression and, [00:53:00] and—uh—it's okay to be racist and—and—uh—you know, violent and so on. But you, the United States is now into this year and part of last year its third Uranus return,
Amanda Walsh: Hmm.
Renn Butler: So that's a completely different energy. And it was during the first Uranus return of the United States chart that Abraham Lincoln spoke those beautiful words. So I think that the—the good side of the American psyche, the—the warm, friendly, kind, generous, idealistic, freedom-seeking, creative sides of the American psyche are gonna get a real boost, and a lot of people are just gonna go, “That—that didn't work. Th—that is not the way forward.” You know, there's got to be a… We have to get back to the project of green transition and—and living together with different people that look different than us and—and also have [00:54:00] different religions than us around the world, and we—we don't need to be threatened by differences like that, you know? So…
Amanda Walsh: And archetypally, which—which archetypes are you seeing alive in that?
Renn Butler: Well, the Uranus return for the United States chart, because the United States is such a—a powerful and influential country. I—I—I see that as just very, very important. That is going to get really strong within the five-degree orb in July. So wa—tch for some feelings of breakthrough and opening as people kind of just get sick of—of the conspiracy theories and just like, let's just get back to the job of joining the human race.
But the Uranus trine Pluto in the sky, the world transit, that is the big one.
Amanda Walsh: Yeah. Tell us about your upcoming book.
Renn Butler: Yeah. Well, Archetypal and Holotropic Astrology, it will be filled, [00:55:00] and it'll be in color with a lot of beautiful art, and mandalas, and infographics, and, um, filled with—uh—session reports from psychedelic therapy sessions and Grof Breathwork sessions. And I—I'm also looking at—um—the most famous contemporary and past Western astrologers, and have some little passages about them and some of their major aspects, including Amanda.
And also the major—uh—psychologists and the—um—major human potential leaders. So that will be a part of the book as well. And then I'm also working on a two-volume archetypal astrology encyclopedia, which will have those groups, and then about another 20 categories of people as well in a—in a, you know, two-column big book. Two volumes of that. So, [00:56:00] um, yeah, so I—I keep busy. I—I have Moon, Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn in Capricorn.
Amanda Walsh: Yes, I understand that very much. But one of the things that continues to delight me about meeting people like you, Renn, is how passionate and alive you still are about your craft, about astrology. Like, you're still creating, you're still exploring, you're still researching, you're still discovering with a level of enthusiasm that I think is pretty unique to the astrological field. But I—I mean, we get to experience it all the time through great astrologers like you. But I just love to reflect on that, that that is really precious and rare.
Renn Butler: Ditto. Thank you. Ca—n I share—ca—n I share a—a couple more little things of—along that—that line? Um…
Amanda Walsh: Please.
Renn Butler: [00:57:00] So I just—uh—see here. So we looked at that one and that one. Just a couple more. This is another one I just made last month. So I call this, yeah, A Sweet Afternoon in the Mythic Space Surrounding Eleusis. Now, one of the great things about—about deep self-exploration is you can experience these deities and terrains, the hells, heavens, paradises, from cultures from around the world and from the deep past.
So, you know, here this is Oshun from Africa, Lakshmi from—uh—India, Aphrodite from the Greek, and then Ishtar, Babylonian death-rebirth goddess. She was kind of a prototype of Venus, but many thousands of years earlier. So—uh—it—it… I really cherish opportunities to depict some of these amazing personas of the divine, and then some of the [00:58:00] world deities that embody the Neptune archetype.
We—we n—the—the Greek roots are really important, and I'm glad we're reclaiming them and rediscovering them, but—but these astrological archetypes are not just a Greek phenomenon. They—they permeate through the mythologies of the world. So, you know, Buddha, Apollo, Christ—uh—Brizo, Mazu, Tlaloc, Yemaya, and so on. These are the—the muses. There's nine, but it mercifully didn't try to squeeze them in. The nine muses is one of the most sublime manifestations of the Neptune archetype. They brought inspiration, so very, very special.
And then one final one, little bit darker. Uh, Plutonic heavyweights, like—uh—Kali, Coatlicue, —uh—Nephthys, —uh—Persephone. Of course, she's [00:59:00] both Pluto and Uranus. Dionysus, Shiva—uh—Ma'at. Ishtar was also a death-rebirth deity, so—uh—so I thought that was enough time. So—so I'm having fun.
Amanda Walsh: You—you—you know who is missing from that one?
Renn Butler: Pele.
Amanda Walsh: Yes.
Renn Butler: I caught her right at the end, missing… The AI d—idn't always put everything in there.
Amanda Walsh: Yes, of course. I…
Renn Butler: Have her in other… She—she definitely deserves to be there.
Amanda Walsh: Yes. Yes, I have my—my—my personal—uh—connection to her. And—uh—yeah, just experiencing her Plutonian essence is—uh—is—is a very powerful thing.
Renn Butler: Yeah.
Amanda Walsh: Yeah. Yes. Renn, thank you so much. It is such an honor and a joy, and it's just so fun to have this opportunity to explore the archetypal lens of astrology [01:00:00] with you. And I hope that we have more opportunities. And is there anything else you wanna say just in closing to our community, our audience?
Final Thoughts
Renn Butler: Um, hello and, you know, uh, thanks for letting us talk about what we love so much and, and good luck with, with all your transits everybody and your projects. Um, come, come take my course. Uh, we, we'll be looking at famous people and events in the news and, uh, you know, actors and musicians and, and, uh, going through all the planetary pairs one by one,
Amanda Walsh: Mm-hmm.
Renn Butler: and the range, and then looking at people's dreams and sessions and relationships, and like the composite and synastry. So it's a pretty rich course, so…
Amanda Walsh: Amazing. Amazing. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being a part of our community. Thank you as always for making astrology a part of your life. Cannot wait to connect with you [01:01:00] on the next episode. Take care.