What are Archetypes?

In this episode, Astrologer Becca Tarnas and Amanda discuss how to move from understanding Archetypes only on an intellectual level, and how to start to actually experience them tangibly.

You’ll learn …

🌖  What is archetypal thinking

🌗 Why learning about the archetypes can make your transits more transformative

🌘 The connection between psychedelic research and the uncovering of archetypes

Chapters 🎞️

0:00 Intro

3:00 What are Archetypes

11:01 The Benefits of an Archetypal Understanding of the World

14:38 Becca’s Astrological Lineage

26:28 Practices for Experiencing Archetypes

49:59 Transgenerational Astrology

1:03:44 Outro

Did you hear?

The legendary Richard Tarnas and his daughter Becca are teaching an exclusive astrology workshop… Your Astrological Initiation starts September 21st 🔥

Learn more & enroll today at astrologyhub.com/initiation

Transcript

This transcript is automatically generated. Some miswording might be present.

Hey there Astrology lover. I recently asked Astrology author and professor Richard tar, why he’s so inspired to teach his upcoming workshop, your astrological initiation with his daughter, Becca. And this is what he said. I just saw this as did Becca a great opportunity to try to provide a way of understanding what the astrological mystery is about. We’re hoping to give those who are in the workshop,

a sense of, of grounding of foundations, of a larger framework of understanding within which their adventure and Astrology can unfold with greater fruitfulness. It’s a powerful tool. We want to give a sense for the, the great privilege and therefore also responsibility that comes with Astrology to see its nobility and just, and to recognize how to present the information that we get from our astrological study to do that in a way that is true to its highest potential.

If you’re interested in getting the perspective and wisdom, you need to ensure that you’re always using Astrology for good and minimizing its potential for harm, then this workshop is for you. You can learn more and join us now at Astrology Hub dot com slash initiation class starts soon. So make sure and check it out now at Astrology Hub dot com slash initiation, Rick and Becca.

Can’t wait to see you in class. Welcome to the Astrology Hub podcast. I’m Amanda pool Walsh, founder of Astrology Hub and your host for our flagship show. We explore the many ways Astrology can support you and your relationships, career health and personal growth. Thanks for tuning in Hello, everybody. And welcome to our flagship show. The Astrology Hub podcast.

I’m Amanda P. Walsh. I’m the founder of Astrology Hub, and I am so thrilled to be here today with youngian Astrology and scholar of philosophy and religion, Becca tar P H D. We are so happy to have you here today with us, Becca. Thank you for joining us. Oh, thank you so much for having me here. It’s it’s such a delight to speak with you every time.

Oh same. And we had the pleasure of meeting each other and Colorado a few weeks back, and it’s just so great to be able to continue on that energy that we got to experience with all the Astrologers and such community at the E SAR conference a few weeks ago. Yeah. And today we’re gonna be talking about a really, really important and interesting topic,

which is we’re gonna be exploring practices that help you have a direct embodied, lived experience of the astrological archetypical energies. So this is, is, is something that a lot of Astrologers talk about. It’s something we talk about a lot at Astrology Hub is how to take the information that we’re learning and bring it from a very conceptual, philosophical mental space, because a lot of studying Astrology is that,

but also to anchor it in our bodies and to have the direct experiences with the archetypes so that we know them instead of memorizing them or thinking about them. So, Becca, I’m really excited to explore this topic with you. I know you have a lot of different practices and tools that you’d like to offer us here today, but let’s start with this more general question,

because I don’t wanna assume that everybody understands what we mean by astrological archetypes. And also, I don’t wanna assume that they know what you mean by that. So let’s start with that. What is an astrological archetype? It’s a great place to start and something that is really worth clarifying, because it’s a term that we use a lot in Astrology, but it’s one that I think there are a lot of misconceptions about or confusions.

I think sometimes people think, oh, an archetype is an archetypal figure. You think of like the figures of the Toro, for example, the, the hermit, the Empress, we think of Yi archetypes, which are also many of them figures like the hero or the great mother or the wise old man. When I refer to archetypes in an astrological context,

I’m really referring to an entire lineage of archetypal thinking that stretches back to Plato in ancient Greece, Plato had a conception of archetypes that was more, there were transcendent forms. They were these, what do you called ideas, but idea with a capital I that informed the particulars of the world around us. And so there are some of these archetypal forms that are more easily grasped.

Like an example I’ll often give is behind every particular tree, all the different species of tree, but all the individual trees as well. There are trees to the extent that they participate in this archetypal form of tree with a capital T trueness and for Plato, that archetypal tree, which was perfect and divine it dwelled in this transcendent heavenly realm. And the world around us was merely a reflection images of those ideas,

but then there’s many other thinkers who’ve carried forward and differentiated what is meant really it’s how do universals relate to particulars? So Plato’s student Aristotle had a really different conception, which is that those universals were in the, the things themselves. When you look at a tree, the form of tree is actually in the tree and we abstract it with our mind. So that holds an interesting question,

are archetypal principles, something that are within our human mind and their categories we abstract from the world, or are they something that’s sacred and beyond the world. And that points more to what we would think of in terms of gods, right? Our planets are named after gods from one Pantheon, but we can look to all the different pantheons around the world and see different permutations of these archetypal forms,

but in so many different gods and goddesses and deities. And so when I refer to an archetype in an astrological context, I’m kind of referring to that entire history simultaneously, which is very broad, but you need that astrologically. So we are referring to gods, but we’re also referring to these platonic ideas that are more transcendent and we’re referring to something that’s more imminent and of the world itself.

And we’re referring to something psychological that’s within us and not more Yian sense. And then, you know, there’s a number of other thinkers that we could bring to bear on that as well. But that kind of gives you a picture of what, what I’m referring to and those who consider themselves to be archetypal, Astrologers are usually referring to when they say archetype.

So it’s, if you think of that, all the different words that describe a particular planet. So let’s say Saturn, I always love starting off with Saturn and we talk about hard work and discipline and maturation and responsibility, but also, you know, boundaries and losses and death and pain and suffering. I mean, that’s a lot of different particular concepts,

but we can Intuit that there’s something uniting all those different keywords. There’s something more that stands behind it. And that’s what we’re referring to with an archetype. It’s like a multifaceted complex principle or being, or universal energy that when it enters into lived experience, it becomes all these different particulars. And that’s the beautiful thing with Astrology is we can see which archetypes are being activated,

but we don’t necessarily know what form they’ll show up in. And so that’s why it’s really helpful to understand the archetype as best we can as a whole, rather than getting stuck in some of those particulars. If that makes sense. I love that. And so essentially what we’re talking about here today are different ways that you can access that universal sort of thread or,

or essence of an archetype so that you have more direct access to the spectrum of all the ways that it might express in your life. Versus again, like you’re saying, you know, that Saturn has all these different ways to, to be experienced and yet it’s all Saturn. So again, having that Li Li once we have, once we have an experience of that seed or essence,

then it’s easier to, oh, okay. I understand how it can actually express in all these different Ways. Exactly. And I think that’s really important too, for Astrologers, because you may encounter a particular manifestation, say of a transiting or a natal aspect that you’ve never seen before. It’s totally a unique expression, but if you recognize that archetypal principle behind it,

you say, oh, there’s, there’s my old friend hiding in the new form. And that, that lets us see how the archetypes actually evolve through us. They evolve through manifesting in the world around us. And yet at the same time, paradoxically they’re these eternal UN unchanging principles. So that’s kind of how I like to see it. These two polls,

that one is eternal. One is evolving and we’re actually the ones that are mediating that in our lived experience. Oh, wow. I mean, if you think about that, there is like an essence of Becca or an essence of Amanda that is constant, and yet we’re evolving and changing as we grow and have experiences. So why wouldn’t the arch, the planetary archetypes be having the same experience.

Exactly. Exactly. Okay. And in your experience, just working with clients and I mean, this has been such a focus for you for so many years. Would you say that having a more, a, a deeper understanding of the spectrum of ways that a planetary archetype could express also gives you more access to it? Meaning let’s say you’re having a Pluto transiting and you’re not so excited about some of the aspects of that energy,

and you would, maybe you’re finding yourself stuck in it, you know, stuck in just like this constant underworld and constant, like dredging up shadow and, you know, Pluto, Pluto kind of things. And you’re wanting to actually move into the transformation side or the, you know, the, the Phoenix rising from the, have you seen or experienced that when you have a deeper felt experience of that spectrum,

that you can actually access it in your life as well? Absolutely. Because what, you know, when we’re observing a transiting unfold, we’re seeing certain facets of that archetypal principle come through like Pluto, Pluto, let’s say, you’re going through that deep Pluto transiting. And you do feel like, wow, I’m really being destroyed by this. I’m, you know,

I feel like I’m being ground under the heel of some in different God or something like that. And by consciously knowing, well, what are the other expressions of, of Pluto? We can engage more fully with that transformative process, as you’re saying. So if you want to be the Phoenix who rises from the ashes and you’re in a Pluto Pluto transiting,

you actually have to surrender more fully to the process of being burned before you can come forward as that Phoenix or surrendering. Another really good platonic metaphor is moving through the birth canal, that constriction and intensity and encounter with a death rebirth experience where you’re actually not going to make it through, unless you surrender into that and allow the process to propel you through,

it’s the most terrifying thing in the world, but it lets you, if you know the fullness of that archetypal process, it lets you trust it. It makes me think of one of my own teachers standoff, gruff. He, he said that the full experience of a negative emotion is the funeral pirate of that emotion, very platonic statement from a very platonic man that if you really allow yourself to go into it and have that,

that full encounter, then you also get to experience the life enhancing potentials of it. Now, Pluto is an interesting one, cuz it has that element of surrender with maybe a difficult Saturn transiting. We can think more of, well, I’m gonna get more kind of disciplined and structured and focused and ed and we have a lot more control another Saturn word when it comes to working with challenging Saturn transits.

And so each one you have to take on its own terms, of course, but I think we do get to bring in that participatory and co-creative element when we have a better sense of, well, what are the range of possibilities? How do I want to live into this? And we’re never fully in control, but we do have some agency there,

which is, is really empowering. Yeah. Okay. Ooh, exciting. Okay. I know that you, you brought up St. LA gr. Yes. And I know that you, this is part of this, the seed of this talk that we’re having today because you, you, you originally got interested in this because of work that your father was doing with him.

Correct. And, and for those of you who don’t know, Becca’s father is Richard tar, who many, if not everyone in the astrological community would consider a living legend of Astrology and he has written what many would consider like Bibles of Astrology, meaning they’re just those, those go-to resources. When, when people are wanting to have a deeper understanding of Astrology,

of archetypes, of the, you know, outer planet transits and all kinds of things. So, and actually Becca and Richard are going to be, co-teaching a workshop here for us at Astrology Hub in just one week. And it’s called your astrological initiation. If you’re interested in learning from two great, great Astrologers alive today, and they happen to be a father-daughter duo,

which I’d, I’d love to ask you a question about this at the end, Becca, because it’s just fascinating to me to think of like what you grew up in and what that would’ve been like to grow up in, in a, in a household with Richard as your father. But we are, we are open for, for enrollment for that right now.

So if you would like to join us, and if you wanna learn more head on over to Astrology Hub dot com slash initiation, that’s Astrology Hub dot com slash initiation. And I will remind you of that link again at the end. And it’ll be in the description of this talk, but let’s go there next, Becca, the story of your father and how these,

this idea of practices that can enable a deeper archetypical connection. How did that all happen? So I very much work within this lineage and of course have been informed by my father’s work and very much informed by Sandro’s work as well. So just to give you a sense of who gr is, he is a, one of the pioneering researchers into the healing and heuristic potential of psychedelic psychotherapy.

So he was, he, he was a researcher initially in Czechoslovakia in Prague. And as a young psychiatrist was one of the very first people in the medical field to test out LSD when it was synthesized and just cutting edge research into what this particular chemical substance could tell us about the human unconscious. And he did so much pioneering work in the 1950s, 1960s.

He’s one of the founding, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology along with April Maslow and Anthony UCH and Roberto as and others. And so that really was, was his field was research. I keep saying was he’s 91 years old. So it, it very much still is his his research, but he was doing this in the fifties, sixties, seventies,

onward decades of, of this research. And so in the mid seventies, he was scholar in residents at ES Lin Institute and big serve, just beautiful exquisite place. That was a, a center of the human potential movement. And gr was offering workshops there that were focused on his insights from LS D research, but also a new method that he was developing called holotropic breath work that could basically through deep breathing and the use of powerful music and body work induce a non-ordinary state of consciousness,

quite comparable to what could be induced with psychedelics, but with no chemical medium, other than the oxygen you’re bringing in. So he was doing those workshops at Lin writing his books. And my dad was a young doctoral student at Saybrook univer or Saybrook Institute. And he came to Esly to do his doctoral research on LSD psychotherapy with Stan. And one of the big questions that they were trying to address was the variability of experience that people would have when they would take a chemical substance like LSD or like psilocybin,

because in a clinical trial, you could give someone this substance, same quantity to two different people, same set and setting, and they would have radically different experiences, or you could give it to the same person, again, same quantity, same setup, but at a different time, radically different experience, and nothing was answering the question of this variability.

And it also showed that these chemicals really weren’t like normal. Psycho-pharmacology where if you give someone a drug, they haven’t expected experience each time you take, it was something they were working with something else. And there was a seminarian who was at LAN for one of the workshops named a Trevi, and he was an artist and he also happened to be an Astrology.

And he asked them, have you ever tried transiting Astrology to look at this variability and being well educated individuals in the, the modern Western education system? They had not considered Astrology, I mean, ultimate taboo in the, in the academic world, but they had tried so much and felt like it would be kind of Hub to just dismiss it out of hand.

And Lin was a place that was a bit more open to other ways of knowing and different methods of understanding the human experience. So this man already tread of it, gave them a kind of crash course in what the basics were to calculate a natal chart, to calculate your transits. Remember, they’re doing this all by hand, back in the mid seventies,

no software to do it for you using an ephemeris using the table of houses and all of that and that what they found, what, when they looked at the transits for their own sessions and for the sessions of other people that, that Stan had sat for over the course of his career was Astrology could give a very illuminating picture of the kind of experience someone was having,

but not in a concretely predictive sense. You couldn’t look at the transits and say, oh, they’re gonna have this exact experience with these particular images. Rather it gave them an idea of which archetypal principles would be present. And in that expanded state of consciousness, they actually, the individual would experience kind of the full range. So if you have a major transiting from Saturn or Pluto,

as we’ve been talking about, rather than that, that one or two or 10 big expressions that you experience in your ordinary life, it’s like you’re getting the full encounter with the archetype of Pluto all at once in all the facets or Saturn all at once in all the facets or Venus in, in that full spectrum of beauty and love and, you know,

artistic expression and so on. So when we think of all those key words, those particulars in these expanded states of consciousness, it’s as though you’ve crossed over a veil and instead of encountering one or two particulars, you are rather having a kind of direct luminous meeting with this archetype. And so there’s this really beautiful mutual illumination that takes place there. The Astrology was showing them the,

the nature, the archetypal nature of the kind of experience someone would have. Would it be challenging? Would it be a breakthrough? Would it be exquisitely beautiful and luminous? Would it be hellish and intensely overpowering? They could see that very clearly, but it illuminated the other way. And this is so much of what informed the research. When my dad was looking into all the historical correlations and biographical correlations that have informed his books is that these expanded states of consciousness also allow us to better understand the Astrology to better perceive which archetypes,

which gods are present in whatever it is. We’re looking at history biography, the arts literature, and so forth. So there’s this, this extraordinary mystery and mutual illumination between these two fields that, that blew them both away. And I radically changed both of their lives. So here we are decades later, It’s incredible. Do people outside of this little realm that we’re in,

are they aware of this research and these findings? I mean, how far has this gone beyond the astrological community? For example, That’s a really interesting thing to look at because Stan Gros work reaches further in terms of, you know, he’s, he is really a pioneer in the realm of transpersonal psychology. And because he’s a psychiatrist coming from a medical background who did just extraordinarily detailed clinical research first in Prague,

then in Maryland, then later on in a different form at Lin, his findings really challenge mainstream psychiatry. And so for a lot of people, it does open up a whole other domain in terms of the like cartography of the human psyche. But there are plenty of others in the medical field and in the, the psychiatric field who have pushed back against his findings,

but especially in the last decade and a half, really the most recent Uranus Pluto, Pluto alignment with the psychedelic Renaissance, there’s where they started doing legal research again into non-ordinary states of consciousness, particularly around mystical experiences, confronting a fear of dying and a number of other oh, treating PTSD. Those are all areas where graph’s work is very well known. Now in transpersonal psychology,

I would say the vast majority are not aware of the archetypal Astrology connection. Some of many have heard of it. And if anyone’s really deeply engaged in graph’s work, they know how much he espouses it. Especially in the last few decades, he sees Astrology as he calls it the Rosetta stone to the human psyche. This is the key. So in each of their fields Astrology on the one hand,

in terms of my dad’s work and transpersonal psychology, on the other hand, in terms of Bro’s work, there is knowledge of the overlap, but it’s a very, I think narrow community who really takes in both and sees how they mutually inform each other. But I imagine that will grow over the years as we do see so many of the kind of healing applications for these different fields.

Okay. So I know that there are a lot of ways to access this arch essence in addition to the psychedelic substances. Yeah. So can we go through some of the practices or things that people can do to have these lived experiences? Like the people in these studies we’re having? Absolutely. So one that I just touched on was graph’s development of what he called holotropic breath work.

He called it holotropic because he coined that word. It combines two Greek words, meaning holo or Holos meaning wholeness, and then tropine meaning moving towards. So it’s a moving towards wholeness. That’s what holotropic means. Holotropic breath work, induces an expanded state of consciousness like psychedelics, but the advantage is it doesn’t require any particular substance to mediate. It, it is still important to do in a kind of well held container.

And there’s a lot of facilitators out there who hold workshops with holotropic breath work, but essentially it’s deep breathing, listening to powerful music at the same time. And then further on in the session is sometimes having body work as well to release through the body. And I’ve found that in those states of consciousness too, just like with the psychedelics, you can have this kind of direct encounter with the archetypes,

that it are going to be relevant to what your transits are at that current moment. And they’ll be relevant to your natal Chart too. That’s kind of the baseline there. Now, again, if we wanna move into a realm, that’s not behind workshop barriers, cuz I think that’s really important. A practice I’ve become really interested in is called active imagination.

And at least under that term, it was developed by CG young. So the, the founder of analytical psychology, one of the, the fathers of depth psychology and this practice kind of came upon him spontaneously, cuz he was having spontaneous visionary experiences, but then you started working with it and essentially what active imagination is, it’s meditating with images. So when we typically think about meditation,

this is a huge generalization, but when we typically think of meditation, we think of a kind of emptying of the mind or a a letting go of focusing on the breath of focusing on a sense of emptiness so that we can transcend any sense of self. Typically that’s what we think of with active imagination. It’s more like what some refer to as visualization,

it’s holding a particular image in mind. And then this is the amazing thing about the psyche is the psyche is animated, right? That’s where the word Amma, which is Latin for soul is at the root of our word animated. And so the psyche’s impulse is to move. And so if you, I promise if you try this, if you sit down and you hold an image,

any image in your mind and you kind of suspend your critical thought process, you know the part that comes in and says, this isn’t gonna work. This is stupid. Why am I doing this? Get the ego to take a backseat for a moment and just focus on the image, what will inevitably happen? And it blows me away every time when I leave lead students through this is that image starts to move.

Y and it’s as though you see a static image starting to transform, it might be a bit blurry, but things start to happen in that internal world of the imagination. And with concentration, it does take a lot of energy to do this, but with concentration, what you can eventually do is as young describes it, step across the threshold into the drama itself.

And so for him, he was having full blown conversations and encounters with different kind of archetypal figures in an imaginal space. That was kind of entirely a beautiful way of putting it is you go so far inward that you go outward again and enter into this inner realm that is as infinite as the outer realm. So my suggestion for someone working with astrological archetypes is choose a particular archetypal figure.

Again, maybe you’re having an intense Pluto transiting. This would be a very powerful experience and hold, whatever images feel present for you at that moment of Pluto, Pluto, hold that in your imagination or just even the concept of Pluto, the planet, hold that in your imagination and then suspending that critical faculty trust that something will happen and see what happens.

And you can gain really profound insight into where the psyche takes you in relation to that archetypal principle. That can be more along the direct that those lines of a direct encounter. Again, with the archetypes, you may also find a lot of other things come up. That’s that’s the interesting thing with any of these practices is the psyche has its own agency.

And so we may go in thinking, I really want to understand my Venus Saturn complex, and you may start there, but then you start to have other things that inherently come up and the psyche does have a kind of natural impulse towards healing. That’s why graph calls it holotropic because we have this natural impulse to move towards wholeness. And so we may start off by contemplating one of our archetypal complexes,

something that’s in our birth Chart, or maybe a transiting we’re going through and find that our psyche has a bunch of other things that wants to tell us too. But that’s something I would suggest is that kind of meditating with the images that you know of the different planetary archetypes or the combinations, that’s where it gets really fruitful like, oh, there’s a,

a Mercury, Mercury Jupiter opposition in the sky. Maybe I should contemplate those two archetypal principles and see what starts to come forward. And that’s not something you can ever learn intellectually. It really, it touches on all the ways of knowing intuition, imagination, emotion, somatic. It, it touches all those levels at once. That one really speaks to me deeply.

I don’t know if you remember from our, so most of the audience knows, cuz you’ve heard me say this so many times. I always gift myself a reading on my birthday. So every year I choose very carefully and astrologer to have a reading with. And one of the questions that I ask is, is there in archetype, some people might say a totem animal or,

you know, but for me it’s like, is there an archetype that would summarize the energy of this year for me, one that I could focus on. And in 2020 I had my reading with Becca and she had me focus on an Eagle or any actually any sort of bird essence. And that, that was my, my archetype for the year. And so throughout the year I would,

I would meditate on the bird and like what that means. And especially in 2020, that was very interesting with all of the restrictions and thinking of a bird flying free everywhere. So it was really interesting combination. This, this year I had my reading with OIE Grace and she told me to meditate or, or that my archetype was a black Panther, but a black Panther in a jungle like sort of pacing and not ping,

but, but observing and being very aware and very keenly focused and ready to pounce, which she said would be more like a 20, 23 thing. And what I find is that when I focus on these images, I mean, Pluto is an amazing one to even just contemplate the planet and that heart shape on the planet made out of ice, correct? Like a heart made out of ice.

Like, whoa, just going into that alone can give you so much information about Pluto’s lessons and, and medicine really, and the same can be done with any archetype. So I, I love this one so much Becca and I feel there’s a lot of potency and power in it in, in that like letting ourselves really focus on the imagery and, and then use that to have a deeper understanding and experience.

I think it’s a really helpful way to be able to integrate what is coming up for us in our major transits. And, you know, I typically look at well, what are the outer planet transits that are unfolding because the inner planet transits are so fast and we get the sense for, you know, the days or weeks or maybe even months if you know,

like Mars slowing down and we’re gonna have Mars hanging around in a certain area for a while, when we look at the outer planets, we really get a sense of, oh, this is what’s happening this year, or this is what’s happening over the next 3, 4, 6 years. And then what you may find, you know, that distillation of an image from the archetype of the Eagle or of the Panther,

that’s not quite the most, it’s not a totally concrete form of like a day to day practicality expression of the archetype, but it’s also not the full spectrum of one of these kind of universal principles. It’s something in between. And that can really help show the ways we may want to embody something. And that, that is such a helpful practice in terms of simply being in a kind of a aware relationship with these principles and how to focus,

how to direct the energy as best we can. Hmm. Okay. So we have holotropic breathwork which means moving toward wholeness. I love that. And we have active imagination, which is based on Young’s work, any other practices that we can do on our own to have these kinds of experiences. Let me add a footnote to the, the active imagination one too,

just because we so often will give credit to an individual that they developed something. Ah, but usually there’s a lineage that stands behind all of these things. So Young’s practice of active imagination has roots in Neoplatonism and mysticism and the Cabra and really comes out of what’s called Figi, which means God work. And it’s essentially exactly what I’ve described, but imagine the Neoplatonist doing this as part of their way of conjuring an image in relationship to a God or in relationship to an archetype.

That’s the, the deeper roots behind that practice. So if you ever hear the word theology, that’s standing behind it. And again, I think it’s kind of important to break it out of, oh, this one man invented this thing. Yes. Same with holotropic breathwork I mean the particular forum that gr developed it in when he was at LAN Institute and co-developed it with his,

his late wife, Christina gr at the time, that is a, a very particular form, but we can look to so many different ancient traditions that work with breath. And any of those modalities that bring us into an expanded state of consciousness are going to be avenues. So I’m sharing what I’m most familiar with, but I’m also speaking to these roots and multicultural lineages because it’s not confined by any means.

I mean, yoga practices are such an extraordinary way to be able to have a more direct encounter with these principles. Another one I would bring in, which is maybe a little different than the kind we’ve been talking about here is working with the arts. If you have any kind of passion for any of the arts, whether that’s music or film or literature or painting dance,

this is something actually a quote that I got from my dad that he said even before he got into Astrology, which was a work of art is great to the extent that the archetypes are present within it. And we find that right. There’s certain works of art that we look at and we feel like it’s, it is larger than life, or that artist is larger than life.

They’re embodying something way beyond the individual normal human being. And that’s an area that we can have a more direct encounter that that’s often why in the Tarno school of teaching Astrology, it’s often taught through the arts. Here are films. Here are music videos. Here are, you know, key works of literature that you can see the natal Chart and often the transits as well at the time of creation of the artist who brought it forward.

And so that mutual study of looking at the birth Chart and looking at the work of art and distilling, which archetypal forms are present there, we also get it there. And so that’s another way that’s a little different than maybe a spiritual or shamonic practice, but is another avenue that’s accessible to all of us. You know, if you sit down with an extraordinary album or a great film,

the way I always recommend doing it is start with the artwork first, just enjoy it and then see, gosh, what felt present there? What was I discerning apply your astrological, intuition to that, and then look at the Chart and that’ll help you cultivate your, your intuition, but it also lets you perceive the archetypes there without any preconceived notion of,

oh, it should be this, or I’m looking for that. And you’ll be amazed by what you’re able to really perceive. I think that’s what shows us what’s most important in a Chart too, that’s coming through in someone’s artwork because it’s as though it’s, as though the gods are speaking through us in our art forms and want to be heard in that more direct expression,

Becca, I remember when you were an inner circle astrologer, we always have our inner circle, Astrologers select music that embodies the energy of the lunar cycle. You know, whichever lunar cycle we’re in. And I remember Becca selecting music that the artist, the artist had, whatever configuration was the most present. Do you remember your two artists Who they were?

I do actually. So we had a Venus Jupiter alignment that we were looking at for the beginning of the cycle. And I brought in the Kigo remix of the Whitney Houston cover of the, the song higher love. And so that’s Venus Venus Jupiter with Neptune in there too, so that wasn’t in the world transits, but she’s, she’s got the Venus Venus Jupiter,

Neptune alignment, and it just perfectly carries that. And then at the end of the cycle, Venus Venus had moved into alignment with Saturn and Pluto Pluto. And so I wanted a, something that carried that Venus, Venus, Pluto, Pluto quality. So I brought in Janus, Joplin’s take another little piece of my heart, which she has a Venus Pluto opposition.

And you get that sense, like the Pluto Pluto, like ripping your heart out for the love of someone that’s both destructive and all consuming. And that song was written by Irma, Franklin who’s Aretha Franklin’s older sister who has a Venus Venus, Saturn Pluto alignment in her Chart. So I just love it when it goes all the way down, like the,

the writer and the artist who covers it. And it just runs all the way through. It’s incredible. I have chills all over my body, as you’re saying that just it’s, it’s amazing to, to, for us to be able to experience the, the result of those astrological astrological configurations, and you can, you have such a different experience like you think of the song higher love,

and then you think of take a little piece of my heart and it’s just an entirely different experience of a piece of, of, of art, you know? Absolutely. And I’m wondering in the tarnish school of psychology of Astrology, if for our workshop next week, if you’re gonna be bringing in some, some art or, and examples of the different kinds of things we’re gonna be covering.

Mm. It, I know we’ll both be tempted to, and I, we hadn’t settled yet on whether we would bring in particular artists, like if we would play music or if we would be showing something, just because that narrows us into a kind of specific, oh, we’re looking at this complex at this point and we’re covering such a broad range of topics in the workshop.

We both have a tendency to try and fill four hours with a 15 week course. So there’s a good chance something will come in of that nature, whether it’s actually experiencing it directly there by us playing something. Or I know there’ll be references throughout. I mean, that’s just the way of illustrating archetypal complexes as I learned it. So, so good.

And you have full permission to bring in as much of that as you would like Wonderful. We definitely will love it. Okay. So we have three. Now, are there any other practices that you would recommend that we do, You know, another one that we can work with, and this is kind of related to all of the ones we’ve talked about,

but it’s just our own inner, psychological exploration. And that’s encountering the archetypes within, especially in heightened emotional experiences. So this isn’t always the most fun way to do this, but we all have experienced when we’re overtaken by a feeling whether it’s deep sadness or grief, whether it’s intense anger or panic, but we know that feeling when all the rest of us goes away and we’re just in a complete psychological possession state.

And then when we come out of it, we feel like, well, that wasn’t me. That who was that someone took over guess who took over, go look at your transits or go look at the part of your Chart that you like to pretend isn’t really there when we get that fully immersive experience and an emotional possession state that too is a kind of direct encounter with an archetypal principle who’s living through us.

And that’s the really fascinating thing about James Hillman. The archetypal psychologist says he speaks of archetype’s emotional, possessive effect. Like they have a way of taking over us. And if we become aware of when that happens, then two, two things at least can occur. On the one hand we recognize which archetype is living through us. When we’re in that,

you know, rageful state or deeply depressed state, we can see who is at play, who’s living through us. The other side of that is we become more psychologically self-aware. And so when we see the possession coming, we can also draw on other faculties and ourselves to bring balance. And so here, this is more, just a general working with astrological archetypes,

but I always think it’s really important to focus on that balance. So often I will be asked, like, which is my archetype, which archetype am I supposed to express? And honestly, I think we’re not really meant to be the vessel of just one or two archetypal principles. We can, if we’re putting it into the arts, because that’s a good place for it.

We can, if we’re kind of channeling it for something, but in a day to day life, when we’re in that kind of possession state, we can’t be human. That that’s the realm of the gods or that’s the realm of the archetypes. And so the more we can find that balance, oh, here comes the rage possession. Okay. What helps me with that?

Maybe it’s talking it through, maybe it’s taking quiet space, maybe it’s physical action on my own so that I can move that same archetypal principle through in a very different way. And so that’s more of a, a working with the archetypes almost so that we don’t have as directed encounter because sometimes that can be overwhelming or it can be destructive. That’s why stepping back to all of these practices,

we’ve talked about psychedelics and sacred medicines, holotropic breath work, and other forms of altering our consciousness through some physical means, you know, drumming music that those are other forms, active imagina, imagination, meditation, everything we’ve talked about, all of those need a container. They all need some kind of space where we can fully go into it and then come back out and go into our day to day lives because we can’t live in that state.

It’s not what we’re meant to be doing as human beings. We have to come down off the mountain or we have to come out of the cave and engage with each other in a balanced and relational way. So I think part of the importance of these direct encounters in all these different forms is to see who we’re participating with. And then also ask how can I be of service so that I can find balance in myself and in relation to others so that I’m not trying to be a walking God,

I’m trying to be a, a balanced human being. Who’s a kind of vessel for all these principles. Does that make sense? Oh, yes. So, so beautiful Becca. Thank you. And I would just love that to take the opportunity now, to dive into a little bit more about the upcoming workshop that you’re co-teaching with with Richard and what the students are gonna learn,

why you’re so inspired and excited to teach the topic itself. So can you talk a little bit about that Now? Absolutely. Well, I mean, part of why I’m so excited to be doing this is my dad and I haven’t had that many opportunities to co-teach and, and I think there’s been good reason for that too. I mean, I’ve been on my astrological journey for about 12 years now.

And so I’m at a point where I feel comfortable that we can be in the room together co-teaching and that there’s actually a mutual learning with each other that’s taking place. So, you know, it, it took some time and a lot of learning and development to reach that point in terms of what we’re gonna be covering. You know, we’ve called this your astrological initiation,

because we’re really speaking to the initiation that takes place within an individual. When you encounter the astrological perspective, your life changes, and you enter into a different kind of worldview in relation to the world around you, the people in your life. And so different people have different responses to that. And those around them will have different responses to that as well.

And so I find a lot of people when they first start learning Astrology, if they’re the first in their community to do that, suddenly family members and friends or coworkers will come in asking for astrological advice, but someone won’t necessarily have the, the experience or the practice yet to really know how to hold that. Hey, will you look at my Chart?

Sure. But I don’t totally know what to say to you. So this is it’s speaking to those who either are not yet professional Astrologers, or maybe don’t ever wanna become professional counseling Astrologers, but they’re still finding themselves in that ambassador position. The other is when you get the skeptics coming at you and you find yourself having to defend, or even being asked to prove Astrology when you’re maybe just learning the basics and that’s also a very overwhelming place to be in.

And so we’re gonna be speaking about how you can bridge between Astrology and the mainstream in a way that is respectful of the astrological practice, but also can communicate with those who really don’t understand the context or the historical lineage of what Astrology actually is and the extraordinary insight that it offers us. So that’s, that’s really the broad overview of what we’re doing. And then we’re gonna be doing that task through a lot of different specifics in terms of getting people comfortable with the fundamentals in astrological practice,

ways to speak about things that will be easily translatable to the uninitiated ear. So that’s part of the, your initiation is learning how to be a translator and a speaker on behalf of Astrologers, the language of the stars. Mm God. So good, Becca. And you’re also gonna be giving a bonus gift to all of the students. Can you tell us a little bit about the bonus gift that you have created for this Class?

I was so grateful for this opportunity because I’ve been wanting to write this for years. And so I work well with deadlines. I wrote a, it’s kind of a guide to the basic fundamentals of archetypal Astrology. And it’s a step by step there’s 33 steps to learning the most basic things you need to know to have a solid astrological practice, memorizing the cliffs of the planets,

memorizing the cliffs of the signs of the Zodiac. Being able to know the geometry of the aspects, the, the layout of the Zodiac, how the elements and modes relate to each other practices. So you can draw your own natal Chart, how to read an ephemeris, how to calculate your personal transits using the ephemeris so that you’re not just reliant on software.

So it step by step teaches you how to do that. What it doesn’t include is a, a description of the planetary archetypes. It’s not this isn’t about interpretation or meaning it’s everything you need to know so that you can get to that point because there’s so many other resources that can fill out that part. So this is really like the bare bones, practical steps.

And my hope is people can go back in and refer to it anytime they need to remind themselves of all right. That’s how sex styles are work in relation to the Zodiac. That’s how oppositions are or any other kind of basic thing. This is how I read ephemeris so that I hope it really becomes like a, a useful tool and a reference for people.

Hmm. And Becca was so cute. You know, normally our bonus gifts are like a, a PDF download that might be like two or three pages or, you know, just something pretty, pretty simple. But Becca comes back with this gorgeous. I mean, it’s an ebook like it’s, it’s awesome. And I think you’re gonna love it. All of you,

all the students of this class, and then your father also provided a bonus gift, which is an excerpt from a talk. Correct. Do you, do you know the specifics on that? I do. He wrote, so this essay is called introduction to archetypal Astrology and it actually pairs well with the guide I wrote because it is a description of each of the planetary archetypes and discusses some of the,

you know, main issues that come up around the question of fate versus free will. And he wrote it, oh gosh, thousand years ago when he was still giving readings at Lin. And he found he was giving the same introduction to every single client. And he is like, you know what, I’m just gonna write this essay so that they know what they need to know,

and we can just get into their Chart and transits. And so it’s something I have all my clients read before we do a session too, because it’s such a good introduction to the basic things you need to know, to understand your Chart. So that that’s the origin story of it is he was, I think, tired of going over the exact same information again.

And again, he’s like, I’m gonna write this up. What an honor, it’s an honor to have you both teaching on our platform. It’s an honor to have you teaching together in, in, like you said, you haven’t had the opportunity to do that as much. I love what you shared about you being ready to be in the same room as a teacher with him.

He was so cute on the podcast last week. He said that in, in some places he is, instead of Becca being Richard tars daughter, it’s Richard being Becca’s father. Like, so he’ll be introduces Becca’s father Richard. And so it was just really, he is so proud of you and he glows when he talks about you. And it’s just,

I think just witnessing the interaction between you two alone. I know that when we were doing the, the promotion for the changing of the God series, it was, it was just so beautiful to be able to watch two together and to see this father daughter combo that you each have your, your own beauty that you’re contributing to the conversation. It’s like,

it’s like you both are in, in archetype and expressing in different ways. I mean, there’s, there is that common thread of, of, of intelligence and depth and the psychological background and the academia and the eloquence, you know, all those things, but you each have your own way of, of, of being. And so it’s, it’s just gonna be so much fun to,

to be a part of that as well. So any of you who wanna join us, you can, it’s Astrology Hub dot com slash initiation. You’ll go to that page. You can learn more, you can join us if you are not available for the live workshop times and dates. It’s okay. You will have the recording in your online library within 24 hours of the live broadcast of,

of the live classes. And if you’re watching this later and you’ve missed this entirely, it is available as a recording now. So you can still go to Astrology Hub dot com slash initiation and get access to the workshop and the live Q and a that we will be doing with Richard and Becca. And you’ll have an opportunity to submit questions beforehand. So again,

even if you can’t be at the live Q and a live, you still have a chance of getting your question answered because we’re gonna submit the questions to Richard and Becca. They will choose all the ones that they wanna address, and we’ll be able to have that session together and or recorded after the fact. And you also get the two bonus gifts that Becca spoke of just right now.

And it’s just gonna be an incredible experience. I’m so excited to share this with all of you and so happy Becca that you are going to be teaching it with your dad. So cool. So real quick question about your house growing up and what it was like, like to grow up with Astrology and psychology and all this research, just all around you and I,

and maybe you don’t even know cuz it’s like, you don’t know any different, you know, but, but what was it like for you? Well, you know, the interesting thing is that I had some intimidation of what, what my dad’s work was. And of course I would hear some reference to transits or planetary aspects in my parents’ conversations. And I think I’m sure that contributed to my ability to pick it up when I actually decided to do that.

Like I had a felt sense when they’d say like, oh, he is going through a Saturn Pluto transiting compared to like, oh, I went through a Jupiter Uranus transiting, like very different just tonality that I think probably let me connect in with those meanings in a way that I might not have, but I also really didn’t know what he was doing for a lot of my childhood.

I knew he was a professor and an author. That was typically what I told people. His work was because, you know, you don’t really go around and tell everyone your dad’s an astrologer. That’s not super accepted in most of the world. So that’s often what I would say is he’s an author, he’s a professor and I didn’t really know what he taught,

but I knew some Astrology had something to do with it. As I reached my teens, that’s when I started to pick up on psychedelics, had something to do with it. And then I started realizing who Stan gruff really was. And, and then I started realizing all these other people were that I’d known since childhood and just had no sense of the extraordinary work that they’d been doing.

So the last little more than a decade, basically since I encountered graduate school has been going back and learning the work of all the people that as a kid, I was just like, you’re nice. You’re interesting. You know, just these like childhood interactions with people. So it’s weird. It was actually very veiled in a lot of ways. And you know,

I was born in 1987, right at the beginning of the year on a Neptune conjunction. So my whole childhood was that you’re on a Neptune kind of magical enchanted Farian type of immersion. And those are also harder waters to see through clearly. But I will say I did at six years old ask for a reading. And I do remember some of that reading,

mostly being described in mythic terms because I was really interested in the Greek myths and the Norse myths. And my dad kind of translating the planetary archetypes into those forms. Like this is Aphrodite as she is in your Chart. We recorded it. We haven’t found that tape yet. I so badly wanna find it, but it’s all that being said. It really was a kind of awakening when I was 21 years old.

And I first heard my dad lecture and what he was saying spoke directly to the questions I was asking in my undergrad degree. And it, that was a, it was a life changing moment because I realized that I needed to turn back home and back inward toward my family to actually continue what I thought was a journey outward into the world. And that surprised us both.

I mean, he certainly didn’t expect me to become an astrologer and that was never in my poems either, which I think is part of why he speaks that way, that you were talking about before As a parent, this is such an awesome story to hear. And I love that your parents didn’t like push it down. They didn’t push it on you.

You were just immersed in it. Like you said, you were in this sort of Neptunian, you know, so it was all around you, but it was never, it was never pushed at you, which is probably one of the reasons why you could really naturally like evolve into it and embrace it without any sort of resentment or pushing it, pushing back towards it.

So it’s just awesome. I love that story. Thank you for sharing with us. Absolutely. And just thank you so much for being here again. It’s an honor, it’s a privilege. It’s, you know, something that our entire team just feels. We’re just so excited to have this opportunity to be a part in spreading the beauty of the work that you and your father both do,

and to do it when you’re doing your work together is just so cool. Cause we’ve loved having you as an inner circle Astrology and it, part of the various things that we’ve done here at Astrology Hub, but again, this feels really, really special. So thank you. Nice. Thank you. And if you’re interested at all in learning from Becca and Richard and,

and, you know, entering into this realm that we’ve been discussing today, but even more fully, then your astrological initiation is for you. It’s at Astrology Hub dot com slash initiation, and Becca, you mentioned for people that are newer to Astrology and, you know, finding themselves as the ambassadors, but what about people who have been studying Astrology for a long time?

Do you feel like there’s gonna be something that is on offer for them through this workshop as well? I do because it’s, I mean, hearing anyone who has been working in the field for a long time can give you insight into your own practice, how you’re showing up professionally ways to hold a container. One of the things that I really, really wanted to bring forward in this workshop,

of course, we’re talking about Astrology and astrological technique, but I was really interested in, well, what are the gaps that we don’t talk about in most Astrology classes or workshops, but are really necessary when it comes to being a good person in Astrology. And, and so in that way, I think that this will be really valuable to people who are deeply immersed in Astrology already,

because it is supposed to help you better live your practice and better engage with others that you’re encountering in a professional setting. And I always think it’s so helpful to hear other people’s descriptions of planets, of the aspects. We get new language, we get new ways of thinking about things. We encounter new images that inspire us and that, I mean, I’m a perpetual student,

so I wouldn’t, I never tire of that kind of thing. And I, I have a feeling that’s something that would appeal to advanced students or even professionals as well. Wonderful. Okay, Becca again, thank you for being here for sharing this, all of this with us here today. Thanks to all of you for tuning in, thank you for your interest and your curiosity and your love of Astrology as well,

or at least your curiosity of Astrology. And thank you so much for being a part of our community. And thank you as always for making Astrology a part of your life. We would love to see you at the workshop and we will definitely be catching you on the next episode. Take care, everybody. This podcast is presented by Astrology Hub. You can learn more and find all of our shows at Astrology Hub dot com slash podcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate review and hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. So you can stay up to date on the latest episodes and help more people find the wisdom of Astrology. Thank you for taking the time to do this now. Thank you for being a part of our community and for making Astrology a part of your life.