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The author of Cosmos and Psyche graces the Astrology Hub Network

In this episode of the Astrology Hub Podcast, Astrologer Richard Tarnas and Amanda ‘Pua’ Walsh discuss Cosmos and Psyche

You’ll learn…

• • About Rick’s journey from Astrology skeptic to astrological pundit.
  • How Astrology was and is perceived in the academic world.
  • The pivotal astrological understanding that changed Rick’s life for the last 40 years.
  • The best way to help Astrology spread around the globe.
  • Rick’s perspective on how Astrology works.

✨ Time Stamps

0:00 Intro

3:00 Richard Tarnas’ Astrology Journey

15:15 Astrology and the Academic World

30:13 How Richard Tarnas wrote Cosmos and Psyche

38:02 Tips on Proliferating Astrology

43:16 How Astrology Works According to Richard Tarnas

51:19 Astrology and Modern Politics

1:07:02 Astrology and Ethics

1:15:11 Changing of the Gods

1:20:11 Astrology, Fate and Evolution

Transcript

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

00:00:00 [Amanda Pua Walsh] Hi there and welcome to the Astrology Hub podcast. My name’s Amanda Pua Walsh, and I’m the founder of Astrology Hub. And I wanted to come on today and properly introduce you to our very special guests. Richard Tarnas. I also wanted to prepare you for what ended up being one of my favorite podcast episodes of all time. And I do not say that lightly.

00:00:23 I think in a very few minutes, you are going to understand for yourself why I’m saying that. So for those of you who don’t know him, Richard is a living legend in the astrological world. Many of you Astrology students probably have at least one of his books sitting on your bookshelf right now. He’s the founding director of the graduate program in philosophy,

00:00:44 cosmology and consciousness at the California Institute of integral studies in San Francisco, where he currently teaches. He’s also the author of the acclaimed, the passion of the Western mind and cosmos and psyche. He’s on the board of governors of the C G Jung Institute of San Francisco. And he gives many public lectures and seminars around the us and abroad. In this episode,

00:01:10 you’re going to get to experience Richard’s brilliant mind. There is no doubt about that, but what will really blow you away is his beautiful heart. So for the next 75 minutes, you’re going to learn about Richard’s journey from astrological skeptic to astrological pundit, how Astrology was and is perceived in the academic world, the pivotal astrological, understanding that changed Richard’s life for the last 40 years,

00:01:42 the best way to help Astrology spread across the globe. And a question I love to ask living astrological legends, which is how and why does Astrology work. So if you can allow yourself just a little bit of space to settle in, relax, and really receive this episode, I am confident that you’re going to walk away with deep astrological insights and wisdom,

00:02:11 and you will be so warmed by the beauty of his heart and the poetry of his words. I hope you enjoy this treasure of an episode as much as I did enjoy. Well, hello, everybody. And welcome. And today we are honored to have with us Rick Tarnas, and this is the first time that we are having Rick on our platform.

00:02:36 And I am just so thrilled and so honored Rick, that you’re here with us today, and that we get to have this discussion centered around your book, cosmos and psyche, but also just about your astrological journey in general. So welcome. And we’re so happy that you’re here.

00:02:53 [Richard Tarnas] Thanks, Amanda. I’m I’m happy to be here. It’s it’s it’s an honor at my and as well.

00:02:59 So thank you.

00:03:00 [Amanda] Perfect. All right, so let’s start since this is your first time on the Astrology Hub podcast. I love to ask astrologers how they came to Astrology and, and just a little bit about your journey, you know, how you got to where you are today. So can we start there please?

00:03:22 [Richard] Sure. You know, I sometimes think that Astrology enters into our world rather with almost its own agency,

00:03:31 more than we choose to enter it into astrology. It, it, it came with its own timing and also with a series of kind of almost like gestures towards me until I was ready, you know, but I first ran into any, any discussion of astrology when I was in, in college, I was, I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard.

00:04:04 And my actually was the psychotherapist, a union analyst of my, of, of my Ratcliffe girlfriend at that point who later befriended me and, and in discussions we would have about, he was from Switzerland. He’d been trained by a Jung Carl Gustaf Jung, the, the, the great psychologist psychiatrist. And we just had discussions about European ideas and, and Freud and Jung and so forth,

00:04:39 depth, psychology. And one day in one of our conversations, he, he must’ve asked me for my birth date. I can’t imagine that he went so far as to ask me even for my birth time, but my birth date, I also happened to have been born in Switzerland. So in Geneva, so we had that in common. So he came into one of our conversations with a little list of my,

00:05:04 where my planets were. And in it, it wasn’t like a horoscope, but it was just, you know, your Sun is in Pisces your Moon is in Aries might’ve even said some aspects. And I just thought what has happened to our normally rather, you know, kind of the higher intellectual road that we are used to traveling together. And as quickly as I could,

00:05:29 I sort of steered the conversation back onto more of our, our usual topics. And that was the first knock on the door as it were. And, but I, I think I took note of it, the fact that someone I really respected, and of course I really respected Jung and, and Jung had trained this, this psychiatrist himself. So I,

00:05:58 I had perhaps some alert to there’s something going on here with Astrology. I think the next thing was maybe a couple of years later, reading Rudolph Steiner who not only was, you know, gave gestures of support towards Astrology, but also gave me a frame of reference for understanding how it could work, namely that basically everything material in the cosmos, everything,

00:06:24 everything that we see physically is in some sense, a, an expression of an embodiment of spiritual realities of spiritual dimensions that made a lot of sense to me. And then, but the final step was not till after I’d left Harvard come to the west coast and went to Esalen Institute in big Sur, California, where I, and ended up living for for 10 years and studying with a lot of the people there and then becoming director of programs and the person I was especially,

00:07:00 you know, as I was studying in the w with Joseph Campbell and, and Houston Smith and Gregory Bateson, others like that. But it was particularly Stan Grof that I, that I came there to study with who was the world’s expert in psychedelic therapy. And he and I, I was working on my dissertation and he was my, my supervisor. At that point,

00:07:23 we later became good friends and, and colleagues, and now I’ve taught graduate seminars for 30 years together, but we had always been interested in trying to understand why is it that some people have one type of LSD experience or psychedelic experience using the exact same substance, the same dose level dosage level, and even the same setting, but would have such radically different experiences.

00:07:56 Those, those of you who are listening to us here who have some familiarity with, with psychedelic experiences, know what I’m talking about, because this not only happens between different people, but also to the same person at different times, you can have such different experiences. So I, we were interested in pursuing why that would be the case. And were there any intrinsic factors in a person or in a particular time that would lend it,

00:08:30 give us some help in understanding how a person would respond. And none of the conventional psychological tests like the Roscharch or the TAT had any predictive value for this. And it was only when a, someone who was in one of the seminars that Stan Grof had organized. And after hearing one of one of Stan’s lectures, he said he,

00:09:02 he happened to be an artist, but he also is deeply versed in Astrology. He followed his own transits very carefully. And he said, you know, in my experience people, the, the quality of what a person’s particular experiences at any given time is related to their birth chart and also to the transits that are going across their birth chart. And Stan and I were,

00:09:32 even though Astrology was still over the paradigm boundary line of what we thought would be a plausible direction. We were open enough to like, well, you’ve got to, you’ve got to experiment. You have to, you have to see don’t close off possibilities just on the basis of prior assumptions. And so he, this, this man, his name was Ernie. no longer alive now.

00:10:05 And he kindly showed us how to calculate birth charts. This was like 1975, early 76, right around mid seventies. And we were quite, you know, you didn’t have any personal computers at that point. Everything’s done by hand, but it’s a fairly, it’s, it’s fairly simple mathematics to, to do the calculations. You just have to have know what to do and have the right books.

00:10:32 And so we learned how to calculate charts. We learned how to calculate transits and to our astonishment. After all these years of you, of trying out these other standard psychological tests, the astrological approach turned out to be the one that gave us the most consistent and precise indication of not only the archetype of quality of the experiences that people would be going through,

00:11:02 but also the timing, like so different individuals seem to have different tendencies, different themes. That team seem to come up a lot, you know, over, over the years. And those are more like enduring predispositions in a person’s psyche, but then there’s, there are other by bringing in the transits, we’re able to see the timing of how different parts of a person’s chart and,

00:11:35 and sort of psychological worlds, the different archetypal complexes that they have inside them could be activated or constellated in different ways and with different combinations at different times. And suddenly because we had good records of both our own sessions and many of Stan’s patients from his earlier years in Prague and at the now we’re working in Maryland under a national Institute of mental health program there in the late sixties and early seventies,

00:12:13 we had great data to work with. And just looking at all the correlations opened us up to how helpful this would be. Then I started studying everybody’s birth charted salon. Everybody started lining up to get their, their transits and everything. And then because Aslan was a place where many people came every week and every weekend probably a hundred new people would come just to explore themselves to go through transformational experiences.

00:12:44 It was like the greatest laboratory for testing out, you know, the astrological hypothesis and looking for the correlations because people were going through these transformational experiences in ways that they hadn’t priorly. So it, it, it was, we were able to see, well, look at what transits are going on here. These Uranus transits they’re crossing that person’s Jupiter or their Sun,

00:13:12 and this, this doesn’t happen very often. And it’s right during, or maybe just once in a lifetime with a, with a conjunction and it’s right then that they’re having, having these awakening experiences, the sudden openings, and then under other transits, they go through other kinds of experiences that are, you know, have a more Saturny in quality, more platonic,

00:13:34 more Neptunian. So that’s basically, you know, then I started looking at world history and how the, the world transits, the larger planetary cycles that we all go through of the outer planets, how those connect to history I’d spent my life studying history. And I, as Stan cross set after a couple of years of our research, and he just said,

00:14:00 you know, it’s turned out that this, that archetypal astrology is like the Rosetta stone of the human psyche. It’s just the most useful frame of reference and some symbol system that one could imagine for entering into a deeper understanding of the human psyche and it’s, and, and it’s specific to that. So that of a long answer, but you’ve asked in a way for a little bit of a personal life journey.

00:14:32 And so that’s kind of condensing that part of it. That’s astrologically focused.

00:14:37 [Amanda] Oh gosh, I love it so much, Rick. I love that the first time it got brought up to you from that colleague, the first time that you just sort of saw the information and then change the subject. I know so many of us in this community I’ve had that kind of experience where you bring it up and then all of a sudden the conversation changes.

00:14:55 The person’s not open to it at all in the moment, but that it just kept finding you and finding you. And then you got into a position where it was, it was impossible to ignore the data. Right. And that’s just, it’s fascinating to me. I, okay. I have so many follow-up questions from That and

00:15:13 [Richard] I’ll try to be more concise.

00:15:15 [Amanda] No, No, it’s perfect. You don’t need to do anything different. It’s perfect. I’m loving listening to you. And I know that our audiences as well. Okay. So I’ll start with, with, with one question, which is you, you’ve been in a very academic environment. You’ve been in a very academic world and in an academic world,

00:15:34 astrology, even now, you know, this was in the seventies, eighties, nineties. I mean, you’ve been doing this for a long time. Astrology is not yet accepted as a legitimate academic pursuit. So how has that experience been for you? And do you feel you’ve been able to make any headway and, or do you even try anymore?

00:15:56 [Richard] No, that’s, that’s bringing up in a sense that a whole nother dimension of, of, of my life. And again, it’s a very good question. And, you know, because I, I received, you know, first I, I was educated by the Jesuits in earlier years, learning Latin and Greek and what they call classical studies. So there you learn about Plato and the platonic archetypal ideas or forms.

00:16:28 So then when Astrology came in, I, it was very clear in reading the descriptions of peoples of, of in, in different astrological handbooks that what they were talking about were, could not only be understood as Jungian archetypes that is kind of psychological principles, forces, patterns, et cetera, but also as a platonic archetypes, that is, you know,

00:16:54 the basic idea with, with Plato is that you have there’s many beautiful things in the world, experiences, people, sunsets, flowers, music, et cetera. But from Plato’s point of view, there is an archetypal principle, or as it were a God or goddess of the beautiful capital B, that all things that are beautiful, that we experienced in our human world and in our,

00:17:28 our embodied world, all, all things that are beautiful participate in archetypal, beauty capital, be in the beautiful and the very principle of it. It’s, it’s kind of like that God or goddess enters into and, and expresses its particular energies in our experience, that’s basically the platonic point of view and that there’s this eternal dimension, this archetypal dimension that informs our,

00:18:00 our everyday world. And it was very clear that as I was coming to understand what the astrological approach was kind of revealing that so much of the history of philosophy suddenly made new sense to me later, I discovered that the whole unfolding of like the timing of which philosophers speak and which philosophies become more prominent at a certain time, those also had a deeper astrological and archetypal factors at work.

00:18:41 But at that point, I could see that far from being this kind of most scorned of intellectual activities, Astrology actually beautifully connects to the longer deeper tradition as it does with that’s the deeper, you know, kind of classical European Greco, Roman Renaissance, et cetera, that that tradition in, in so-called Western civilization, but obviously Astrology is also connected to all the other cultural worldviews that existed before the modern or that exists outside the,

00:19:26 the, the Western context in which the cosmos is seen as being ensouled as being enchanted as, as that, as above. So below that, that what’s happening in the heavens and what’s happening on earth are somehow part of a larger unity. Everything breathes together as, as the philosopher Plotinus put it. And so I, to be, to be,

00:19:56 to be honest now, when I think about the issue of how, and I’ve, I’ve talked to many astrological at conferences and so forth, like in England, or here in the states about this very fact that astrologers are in this very unique position of knowing that they, they have available to them, that they’ve been given access to a form of understanding and approach to understanding life that is almost unparalleled in its capacity to aluminate give them more insight into almost anything where you’re taught,

00:20:37 whether you’re talking about your own psyche or interpersonal relations, or the history of philosophy or economics or political and social movements, you name it, the arts, like understanding, you know, the, the, the birth chart and the transits of a given film director, or an actor or actress, or a, or musician, et cetera, composers, it’s just,

00:21:11 it’s so illuminating. And yet we live with this kind of contradiction of being surrounded by a society, in which while there are many, many people who are deeply into astrology as the Astrology Hub attests. On the other hand, you have this paradox that the, the intellectual authorities of the high culture, that, that are particularly prominent in, in the universities,

00:21:39 the academic world, and that in a sense dictate what is intellectually worthwhile and substantive and what, what is, should be just marginalized or regard to superstitious. We all live in a world in which that astrological approach that we, who are astrologically initiated, we value so much because of what it provides to us. And yet it’s, it is the most scorned perspective.

00:22:14 I like to describe it as being the it’s. The gold standard is astrology is the gold standard of superstition in our culture, because if a person wants to come talk about a particular topic, a particular field of interest as being completely ludicrous and unworthy of really serious consideration, then they will compare it to Astrology. That’s that’s the, that’s the go-to. Yeah,

00:22:49 yeah, yeah. And so the, the, the result is we kind of live in this totally contradictory situation. And what I say to astrologers is that this in some ways is, is almost to be expected because anyone who’s been on a spiritual path knows that often it’s the spiritual, the deepest spiritual mysteries and truths are, are concealed, and yet are completely evident to those whose eyes are open,

00:23:28 but they, they are, they tend to be veiled. They tend to be protected in a certain way. And in addition, so it always something as like the, the most powerful, mystical and spiritual Epiphanies the, the, the real illuminations have one waking up and seeing, oh my God, this has always been, their life has always been this,

00:23:53 this sacred or whatever, but I didn’t see it, but it was there. It was as obvious as the sky. And that’s kind of the astrological universe is, is, is there in the night sky? And I mean, it was actually my being a night guard in the earliest years at hustlin that I, I was up all night on the grounds there on the coast of the Pacific at Iceland,

00:24:20 looking up after, after everybody’s either gone to sleep or was peaceful at the, at the hot Springs, the bass there at S on, I could, I could just take, you know, an hour and look at the, at the heavens or on the cliff and watch the stars and figure out the constellations and where the planets were and watch them,

00:24:40 you know, move from rising to setting across the horizon over the Pacific. And it was almost like a kind of numinous transit numinous kind of transmission was happening not to put too inflated a description of it. And I, and I think that’s basically what most people’s prior to the modern era lived in a universe that, that had that available to them. So what,

00:25:13 what I also say to astrologers is this is a very good, in some ways it’s a very good compensation having your profession or your, as it were esoteric knowledge that you’ve been initiated in to that in some ways you’ve been graced by, you know, that that having that come into your life, it’s, it can be a temptation to get inflated. It can be a temptation to feel that one is somehow superior to other people,

00:25:52 superior to everybody who doesn’t know about this. And, and yet it’s so important for anybody on a serious spiritual journey to, to avoid inflation, to see through that hubris, to, to, and people who do get inflated will tend to bring towards them experiences that will deflate them, you know, that will, you know, it’s just the way it works.

00:26:19 And that life tends to design itself for our, our unfolding. And so my sense is that it’s, it could be really seen as a kind of blessing that we have this compensation to just know that we’ve been given a blessing at the same time. We’re not going to be recognized for that by the, the, the worldly authorities that are most regarded,

00:26:53 highly regarded by the conventional society. That’s okay. Because the astrologer, if they, if they’re deep into their participation with the astrological mystery, they are in a relationship to a, to a mystery, to they’re in relationship to a, a, a kind of sacred dimension of being that is a constant, constant gracing of their life. And that’s all you need.

00:27:29 It’s like, it’s like everybody else in you, you notice if you’re in a relationship that you’re really in love with your partner and your partner’s really in love with you. And it almost doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks. If you about you, if, you know, you have this blessing, this, this, this special relationship, and that’s what every astrologer has with,

00:27:58 with the universe, every, every, I think deeply respectful and, and, and any astrologer who doesn’t get too inflated with their own sense of nailing down the, the, the mystery, which you can never do.

00:28:16 [Amanda] You’re making, I mean, Rick, you’re making me cry. That was so beautiful and so true. And I know so many people in this community can feel that,

00:28:29 that, that gift of a relationship, which continues on a daily basis to delight and surprise and bring a sense of magic into everyday world everyday reality. And to think of that as compensation for, okay, not, everybody’s going to get this not, everybody’s going to get me not, everybody’s going to love this the way I love it. Not everyone’s going to understand my affinity towards it,

00:28:57 but that’s okay because I have this almost like the secret world that I get to participate in and enjoy, and the doors open for anybody else to enter into that when they’re ready and if they want to. But for now, I’ll just appreciate that. I have that. I mean, I just, I love that so much what you just said.

00:29:17 [Richard] Yeah. It’s a kind of interior, it’s a kind of interior enrichment that is constantly replenishing itself. Every time, every time you’re looking at a birth chart or getting an insight, a correlation with what’s going on in your life, like now I understand why, you know, I got so irritated there in a way that was with, with a particular person or situation that in retrospect seems like I might’ve been overreacting.

00:29:45 And then I look at well, oh, wow. Maurice was squaring my son or whatever, or my moon. And every time you get just something like that, not only does that help you have psychological insight about yourself and perhaps be more skillful in how we, how we live, but also it, it’s, it’s a little gesture by the universe of here’s.

00:30:13 Here’s a tip my friend. There’s one other thing that your question brings up, which it’s been kind of central for me over these last kind of shaped my life for the last 30 years, which I could mention if we, if we don’t want to go to another place.

00:30:30 [Amanda] Oh, right. Yes. Let’s hear the central thing that has shaped your life for 30 years.

00:30:37 [Richard] Well, and that, that is that I guess it was 40 years, but because I, once I, once I got after about five years, I had just at that point taken in so much astrological kind of downloading and studied. Unfortunately in those years, I would, I would have, you know, people like Robert hand, he had just come out with,

00:31:05 with planets and transit at that point. So I could invite him to come to us on, give, give lectures or Charles Harvey, the pres president of the British astrological association or zebra Dobbins, and, you know, people back in the, it, it was, so it was really nice to be able to be in contact with, with all these lifelong astrologers.

00:31:28 And, but I could see that because of my particular background or education or whatever, and also the setting of where I was the teachers and scholars that I was in contact with. I thought, you know, I should, I should write a book that might help bridge from the esoteric world to the exoteric world. And so that is in other words,

00:31:58 help make Astrology more intelligible and attractive to, to people who might have been like myself, where it just wasn’t on their radar screen. So I started out writing a book that I would basically first have a kind of introductory chapter giving a little history of, of the Western worldview to show how we came out of a philosophical religious cosmological world, or frame of reference that in which Astrology was part of it or that in which the universe was seen as,

00:32:38 as being intelligent and coherent with human consciousness and so forth. And then moved into one that in which Astrology is marginalized or is, is eclipsed. It’s just seen as being, having no real relation to the actual universe that science understands. So I wanted to trace that basically like from Plato and Aristotle, right up to Yong and so forth, but through the,

00:33:08 the astronomical revolutions that Copernicus Kepler Galileo, all of whom were astrologer well, both Kepler and Galileo were astrologers. Newton was a, an Alchemist and Copernicus thought didn’t use any, like most people in the Renaissance. He, he described astrology and astronomy as being, you know, completely interlinked and not one good and one the other, not so, but interestingly out of the Copernican revolution and out of the scientific revolution emerged the disenchanted mechanistic worldview that we’re all educated within in,

00:33:51 in contemporary education. And so I wanted to kind of give people the historical and philosophical background that would help them understand once you bring in depth, psychology and, and Jung, and the archetypal psychologists like James Hillman, the great many, many, many other important psychologists. Once you bring in the, this larger frame of reference, then introduce Astrology as being something that is not as incoherent with,

00:34:30 with their education. And the fact that three of the psychologists who most influenced me, Jung James Hillman, the founder of archetypal psychology and Stan Grof the founder of transpersonal psychology. The fact that all three of them were deeply interested in astrology and they all believe that it was extremely valuable, made it easy for me to, you know, feel the confidence that my own encounter with the evidence was giving me.

00:35:03 So I started writing this and what happened was what turned out to be what was going to be just this one chapter. And then I was going to set out the astrological evidence and that one chapter grew on the, on the history of the Western worldview, philosophy, religion, science, et cetera, that grew into, into a full book. I realized,

00:35:29 wow, this is going to be too big a book. So I should just publish the, this part, the history part, the intellectual cultural history as one book Astrology, isn’t it. And this isn’t the astrological book, but it prepares for it. And I published that with random house Valentine, but they knew that I had this, that this was going to be a sequel to,

00:35:53 or that that would be the prequel. So to speak, to cosmos and psyche, which was the main thing that I was going to write. But what happened was passion of the Western mind, which is the, how the first book was titled or how I titled it. When it came out, it became a best seller. And it started being used in a lot of universities as a it’s still,

00:36:17 it’s still is, you know, including like Harvard and Cambridge and so forth. It’s used in history of philosophy courses, history in Western civilization courses, that kind of thing at seminaries. And so I, I was asked to become a professor myself, which I still am here in, in San Francisco, California Institute of integral studies. And, and I got so busy with the teaching and all the responsibilities.

00:36:51 We had a new doctoral program master’s and doctorate that I founded called philosophy cosmology and consciousness program with lots of great faculty members in Brian swim and Joanna Macy, Stan Grof and so forth that I, it took me 15 years before I then finally was done with cosmos and psyche and published that in 2006. So it turned out that passion of the Western mind,

00:37:26 this wasn’t my intention, but it turned out to be a kind of a Trojan horse, you know, for, so that many people who had been using passion of the Western mind read it, respected. It knew me. I’d be invited to conferences, still am to universities and so forth that, that when cosmos and psyche came out, they thought Astrology,

00:37:51 but then they, they, then they read the book and, and for many of them it opened them up. And so that was an unexpected blessing.

00:38:01 [Amanda] Hmm. So you sort of paved the way with something that was more universally appealing for more academics. And then when you came in to introduce Astrology, it was already that the field was fertile already.

00:38:18 This the seeds had been planted. And so you were able to come in and has it had the response that you would want it to have? Like, do you feel like it’s opened a lot of doors or an, or as many doors as you hoped it would

00:38:33 [Rrichard] It’s. I mean, in, you know, of course I never, I did not know where,

00:38:38 what the reception would be and it’s been, it has been, it actually is adopted in, in some places, you know, some particularly sort of forward moving progressive universities or, or seminaries and so forth, but where it is, where it’s had the biggest impact is, I mean, within the union world, I’m invited all over to the different Jung institutes and,

00:39:13 and associations and societies around the country. Also in Europe, like at Aaronow since Switzerland, where Jung, where Jung often lectured every, every year. So that, and of course the astrological world has been very open to it. And, you know, I often lecture at their conferences and so forth. And because I am in both worlds, I can bring something of,

00:39:42 of what I hope is a helpful bridge, you know, to, and that’s what I encourage people who are deeply into astrology, but also are wanting to serve as a, they’d like to bring Astrology to the, to more of the world than already has been initiated into it. How can they do that? Well, I think the way to do it is to become a really good in some other discipline as well,

00:40:13 whether it’s being a psychotherapist or being a, you know, a high school English teacher or a film critic, whatever it is become really good at that you, you find whatever is you feel a certain competence at and that you take joy in doing and you find, and, and also if it is helpful to others, and if you can find some,

00:40:46 you know, a pursuit that gives you that it answers those, those imperatives of that, you have a kind of almost intrinsic pull towards it that, that you, your, your, your competence just seems to come. Not that you don’t try hard too, but it, it seems to be there as an available potential, but you also take joy in it,

00:41:15 creative joy, it’s coming through you in some sense, almost like you’re being used by something to, to flower. And then that it is useful to others. That’s an important thing, too, that you’re not just in your own little isolated seclusion, but that it is something that, I mean, God knows we are in a time that the whole world needs everybody on deck giving what they can.

00:41:47 So if you, if you, if you do that, then people will, you will know the language, you will be respected by people who are within an other, other domains as a, as a psychotherapist, a, you know, as, as a, as an humanities professor or whatever it happens to be, if a critic of, of music who puts out music reviews on a,

00:42:20 on a weekly blog, whatever it happens to be. And then, and then you’re in a position to, to be a bridge and people will have already respected you for this one area that you’re you’re that they, they know that you’re really competent and highly regarded. And, and then, then they listened to you and you can make the connections. So I think that’s,

00:42:47 that’s one big way of doing it. And it also helps each person find their way in, in, in life with, so they may have a more conventionally acceptable profession, as well as this kind of secret love affair with astrology. And then, and then they can make the two come together and really fruitful ways.

00:43:13 [Amanda] Mm. I love thinking of that.

00:43:16 Each one of us finding our own Trojan horse, you know, finding that bread, that gateway into the larger community, and then just Astrology can come at the right time. And it’s perfect. Okay. So many more questions coming from everything that you’re saying. I love asking this question from time to time from certain astrologers, and I would love to ask it to you.

00:43:45 Why do you think Astrology works? Like, what is, and I know I’m asking you to explain the great mystery, but, but what, what are the mechanisms by which it actually works?

00:44:03 [Ricchard] I suspect that it’s less of a mechanism and more of a kind of organic spiritual unity that informs all things. There’s a, there’s a passage from that I,

00:44:20 the great ancient classical philosopher, the founder of Neoplatonism, and one of the highly regarded as really the greatest of the late classical philosophers before. And he, he was having an a, in one, one of his, one of his writings, he was both, he was countering people who did not believe in astrology and rejected it outright, but also countering astrologers who wanted to turn,

00:44:55 who regarded the, the, the planets and the stars, as, in some sense, causing us to be a certain way in a kind of simplistic deterministic way. And he, and he more, he wanted to say that, that the, that the heavens really need to be regarded more as they, they are indicative of their signs of the archetypal dynamics of the,

00:45:26 of the world soul at any given time behind him on Monday, the, the soul of the world. And he said, the heavens are, the stars are, are, are like a language, a script that’s been written out across the heavens. And it’s, it carries significance. It carries meaning. And he said, everything in the world is full of signs.

00:45:53 Everything in the world is interconnected. And then he says, as has been said, everything breathes together. And the beauty of that phrase is that for me, is that there is it’s, it’s recognizing that contrary to the, that tendency within the, the modern consciousness to feel that we’re kind of isolated what Ellen Watts called skin encapsulated egos, and that we are just each kind of trapped in our own cranium.

00:46:33 You know, we each have our own CR cranium that is separate, and this is where our consciousness is. And everything else out there is in a, in a completely separate category of being. And what he’s getting at is the sense that if everything is breathing together, in some sense that there is a kind of everything is animated. Anima means soul.

00:47:02 It means spirit. It means the breath of life and like the wind, but there’s an organic, spiritual unity to everything in the sense that our very best up-to-date cosmology tells us as well, which is that human beings are not on this earth. We are the earth in human form and the earth and human beings are not in the cosmos so much as we are the cosmos in earthly or in human expression.

00:47:42 And so the fact that when we go deep inside ourselves and tap into our depths, the fact that we’re not just tapping into something, that’s just inside my, my private little brain corner here, we’re tapping into our depths are the, of our interior cells are continuous with the depths of the, of the interior of the cosmos. And so I, I believe that Astrology works more.

00:48:17 I mean, I, I love Jung’s conception of synchronicity because he really has, instead of thinking of it as like a Newtonian billiard balls, in which the planets through some electromagnetic force or gravity or something like that causes things to happen on this plane, rather, there’s just a, a coherence between what is happening in the heavens and what is happening here.

00:48:48 There’s the events in the inner world and the outer world are having an intrinsic connective tissue there. A couple of moments ago. I heard the birds singing in your, behind you out the lovely backyard that you’ve, well, I, I don’t know if it’s the backyard, but anyway, it’s the garden out there and it’s so, and it reminded me of how Jung would pay attention in the middle of his psychotherapy sessions.

00:49:21 He would pay attention to how, when the energies, the emotions would, would, would get constellated within the consulting room between the patient himself and so forth. And you know, what a dream might be being shared or whatever. And in the outside world, he would pay attention to when the wind would be picking up, or the waves would lap on the shore.

00:49:46 There lake Zurich outside is outside of his garden window or birds with suddenly a flock of birds would suddenly land or suddenly take off. And he would pay attention to that because everything, he saw everything as being interconnected, and he was able to kind of read the symbolic meanings in the unfolding of life, in the same way that other people read the newspaper.

00:50:13 He was, he was just a symbolically. He had a highly developed symbolic capacity for discernment at that level. And that’s what Astrology I think gives to all of us is it helps us cultivate our capacity to see the symbolic and archetypal meanings that are unifying and patterning our life, both in our personal lives, but also our collective life that we’re all living together and breathing together or during COVID and the climate crisis,

00:50:52 dealing with breathing together in many other ways, also social injustice and injustice. Like I can’t breathe. We’re all not breathing, or we’re all breathing together and at some level, and that’s why we, I believe Astrology also has relevance for our, our, our S our social justice and ecological justice aspirations. That’s getting off to another topic though,

00:51:19 [Amanda] But it does bring me to a question that came in from our inner circle,

00:51:24 that one of our inner circle members that I would love to ask you, it’s from Lee Saul. And the question is it seems that in our current Western psyche, we are at a stage of either or left or right in which half are wrong, right? Depending on which side you fall on, do you see this continuing for an extended length of time,

00:51:51 or will the cosmos lend a hand to shift this into more balance and collaboration?

00:52:00 [Richard] Well, of course, I don’t know. I, I certainly, I have hope there are so many people working hard to bring about a more collaborative life together. There’s also a tendency in life, both personal life and collective life, where, where things evolve, things change,

00:52:32 everything passes this too will pass. I don’t know how long that will take. And I do know that in some we’re in more danger now, as a result of these, not just the divisions, but the, the depth to which different individuals and parties are living in different realities, or are willing to spend fabricated realities, which divide us even more.

00:53:10 And of course, there’s ways in which social media can amplify that or overcome it. But the, I think the more we, those of you who are listening to our conversation here, those of you who are, you know, part of the Astrology Hub world, for example, the more that you and we are are pursuing our own highest aspirations and also bringing our astrological insight into living more consciously and more compassionately and more courageously.

00:54:01 Then that’s going to make a difference, even things that, you know, those of us who do not have our fingers on the leavers of power in the white house or the Senate, or in multinational, corporate headquarters and boardrooms, nevertheless, everything you do counts, even in the privacy of your own of your own dreams and your own meditations and, and the interactions that you have with those who are your closest to your children,

00:54:34 your parents, your, your, your partner, your spouse, your friends, people at work, people you’re not getting along with. And every, every interaction counts, it goes, it goes into the collective. It’s not just isolated in that room that had happened in because everything we’re all much more permeable interconnected, and it ripples out, it ripples out in many ways,

00:55:06 some are more obvious than others, but nothing happens in, in isolation in this world. So the planets are moving and they keep moving. And, you know, for example, we’ve just been, we’ve, we’re, we’re coming out of over a decade we’ve we’ve of that long Uranus square Pluto that we had. And we went right from that, into the Saturn conjunction with Pluto,

00:55:38 and then the Saturn square Iran, us, and that kind of sequence of, of three major outer planet, hard aspects, hard aspects. I’ll just mention, I mean, every heart aspect is, has its gifts. And, and I mean, hard in the sense that yes, experiences can be hard under the hard aspects, like the square or the opposition,

00:56:01 the conjunction, but they it’s, it’s the hard aspects that make things happen. And during which we, in a sense grow and have to grow and expand and deepen our consciousness in order to come to terms with the, with the, the tensions between the archetypal that are at work. So we’re just coming out of this quite, we’re not out of the Saturn square Uranus is really cooking right,

00:56:32 as we speak. And of course the forces between the old and the new between generations between the, the entrenched past and the, and the impulses for bringing about a new world, but also the resistance. It’s not that Saturn as the, it’s not just on the side of conservative reactionary resistance that is stopping a, a great new world from emerging. Saturn can also be a,

00:57:12 the wisdom of knowing what is valuable to hold onto and, and how to, and how, when to regulate or restrain or, or wisely discipline the, whether it’s the free market or the, or, or our free instinctual self-expression or whatever. It’s some, we have to bring together these, these opposing principles hold the tension of opposites between Saturn and Uranus in this case,

00:57:46 and then bring about a creative synthesis that is that honors, both, both archetypes. And to that extent, when you bring together what Jung calls this conjunct deal, or pository in this conjunction of opposites that had been intention, and if you don’t just fall onto one side or the other, and, and then demonize the other, but instead find ways to,

00:58:15 to bring forth and express the most life enhancing expressions of each of the archetypes involved, then something, a birth happens. Something remarkable takes place. A kind of divine birthing happens where what we might not have been able to envision before it was born can emerge, but we have to, we have to go through that, that birth contraction for the birth to take place.

00:58:46 And that birth contraction often involves a death contraction. I dying to an old identity or an old way of looking at things. And, and we, we, we all have that threshold of transformation upon us right now, as, as part of the, the human experiment. Oh, no, I was going to say about the, that we’re moving into,

00:59:11 you know, this, the, the trine of Uranus and Pluto is starting to come. It will be coming in more and more during the, the 2020s, that brings a more confluent relationship between the, the, the Promethian Uranian energies of awakening to the new, or of bringing new, new, creative freedoms and insights and technological advances, but bringing it in,

00:59:38 in a less fraught way than the square when Pluto comes into the trine, that kind of evolutionary drive. And in addition, you know, that we’ve got a Jupiter Neptune conjunction coming up, you know, very shortly the spring. And I, I think that can bring over the several months of, of that much of the rest of the year, that Jupiter Neptune conjunction can really heighten our sense of being in touch with the,

01:00:19 the invisible dimension. The, the of reality, our spiritual aspirations, big dreams can happen to people I’m using that term the way Jung, it like big dreams are like dreams that carry big significance, greater significance can be very good for experiences are artistic experiences, whether it’s film or, or music that allow the imagination to, to just expand and soar.

01:00:50 Those are all great Jupiter, Neptune possibilities. So I, you know, life, life keeps evolving and we’re definitely in a know a tremendous multi dimensional crisis that I know our podcast here right now, our discussion right now is not going to solve, let alone fully address. But I think we’re in a, we’re in a birth. And I have faith in the universe that any universe that could create the astrological cosmos that is this cosmos in which heaven and earth are so meaningfully connected where the orchestration of the movements of the planets and the movements of our lives,

01:01:39 the patterns of experience we have, where that so harmoniously, brilliantly coordinated, any universe that has that kind of power, that kind of aesthetic majesty is a universe that is in some sense, caring about this earth and caring about every individual on it, who has their own unique birth chart. And who’s going through their own unique transits relative to their chart and their,

01:02:12 for going through their own experiences and have their own journey to, and own path to, to traverse. I think the universe cares. It’s a, it’s a kind of astrology is a kind of act of love expressed towards the earth, this moving center of cosmic meaning. And it’s, it’s an act of love expressed towards every individual. And every moment,

01:02:39 every moment has its own, meaning its own signature its own. The gods are coming together in their own unique way to, to flower under this moment. And so all those give me a sense of, of trust in a larger, a larger evolutionary unfolding taking place. Then we can possibly nail down with our, with our finite intellects, we’re participating in something.

01:03:14 I think our participation is crucial, but I don’t think, but it’s much bigger than anything and much more mysterious than anything we can. We can wrap our minds fully around.

01:03:27 [Amanda] I love what you’re saying, Rick, and it’s both expansive. And you’ve also given us very practical ways that we can participate. And some of the key things that you’ve you’ve mentioned is finding the things that feel natural and easy,

01:03:46 not easy, but what I got was the things that are natural for you, that you naturally Excel in, that you are naturally good at that bring you joy and that serve others. And that every single thing we’re doing actually matters, like it’s, we’re actually a part of a bigger whole, and there’s ripple effects for everything we do, whether or not anybody sees it,

01:04:07 you know, it doesn’t matter. There are ripple effects that we can have. So as we’re all part of this collective birth, and as we’re all dreaming into this new world that we would like to create and participate in living, staying focused on those things that we can do in our every moment of life is our active participation in the whole of that new reality emerging.

01:04:34 And what you said too about this, this Astrology being an act of love and Astrology being a it’s. You know, when I had my first astrology reading, I was 13 years Catholic school. I had studied all the world religion, then college, I had my master’s in psychology. I’d always all these questions that still remained on answered. None of it ever really answered,

01:05:00 but I had that first astrology reading and it was my first evidence of a divine intelligence, heart, whatever you want to call it, that did care. I felt like, oh my gosh, something somewhere somehow that I could never explain does care. And my life does have meaning and purpose. And the fact that this person could look at this circle and some squiggles and actually articulate it is a miracle like it’s,

01:05:27 it’s, it’s incredible to me. And I w I, and it brought me to tears in that moment. So everything you’re saying is, is so true and something else you said before about ancient civilizations or other cultures where Astrology was so much more accepted as part of this enchanted world that we live in, they didn’t believe it. They knew it because they were having,

01:05:55 they had felt, lived experience of it because they were having experiences like you had every night, just you it’s very different than like, oh, I’m intellectually believing something. I don’t actually know it. And in every cell of my body to be true. And so there’s this opportunity for us in this time of birthing to, to have these kinds of experiences with the universe,

01:06:18 these real co-creative experiences where we’re participating in the birth and the creation of something totally new. And I feel like you just, you just, I don’t want to say gave us permission because that, doesn’t what I really mean. But you, you just validated that every single thing that we’re doing it does have meaning it does have purpose and it matters. And so just keep doing that.

01:06:43 [Richard] Yeah. You you’ve said it beautifully. We could just use your last three minutes and then people just have the whole thing right there,

01:06:53 [Amanda] I love the way you said it and bring it in Plato and everything. I mean, it’s, your life is a demonstration of these things.

01:07:02 [Richard] Well, you you’ve really your, your own life history that you just briefly shared.

01:07:07 There is just so evocative of, of everything that I was talking about. And I, I think there’s this, I think as human as homo-sapiens, the human species has evolved and our civilizations have evolved the spiritual dimension of life and the divine manifests itself in, in an evolving way. And it comes through at different times in different ways and, and in different cultures in different ways.

01:07:42 And I mean, there, there, there were periods when, for example, the, the divine and the spiritual dimension of life and our moral evolution, we’re completely being carried. And by the various, you know, powerful religions of the world, whether it was, you know, was an Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam,

01:08:18 and so forth. And the, the great in wisdom traditions as well. And my microphone here, can you hear me okay?

01:08:29 [Amanda] Yes. Yes. It’s changed a little bit, but did you just put it Back in

01:08:36 [Richard] Okay, there we go. Yeah. Okay. And I think what you’ve just described and in a way, what I experienced as well is a way in which you,

01:08:49 you and I both were educated within the Catholic world. And I think in certain ways got very good educations. And, and then we’ve gone on to our other, you know, in my case like secular universities and then Aslan being even a whole nother counter-cultural kind of educational world. But there’s a way in which the astrological disclosure that is happening in our time in a new way,

01:09:24 partly because the outer planets have been discovered in a whole nother domain of understanding has happened. Partly in that, that through telescopes also the, the arrival of computers, much greater accuracy, and being able to know where the planets are at different times over the centuries have day by day, minute by minute, knowing also having way more access to the birth charts of many more people.

01:09:53 We, we see more astrological charts in a day than a lot of astrologers saw in a decade in, in earlier centuries. What, what a different situation we’re in. And I think one of the things I really want to urge, you know, Astrology is a great gift, but it’s also something that we need to bring our best capacities for moral awareness,

01:10:24 you know, being ethical in, in how you give interpretations to people. Do you leave them with a sense of just while that person is telling me, this is how I’ve got to go, and therefore I’m going to go that way, or do you give them a better sense of self understanding where they make their own choices? Do you leave them discouraged because you told them all,

01:10:46 you got these really bad transits coming up, or do you leave them encouraged because you’ve given them a more, a richer sense of what their, what their life is about and what, what kinds of energies they w we’ll be entering into given what they are bringing into it from their own predispositions and capacities we have to, and also bringing in our rigor.

01:11:17 We, one thing about the academic world is that it has developed high standards of, of intellectual rigor, scholarly rigor, that if you make a statement that this is the case, then one should have very good evidence behind it to support it. And not just have that on the basis of, of seeing one or two correlations that kind of, you know,

01:11:38 tickled your fancy. But, and then you tell people as if this is biblical truth and they may not be in a position to be able to assess accurately how reliable, what you just said is so they take it as like, well, that’s the cosmic will that they’ve just told me, that’s, that’s a danger that astrologers have. So whether it’s,

01:12:00 whether it’s you’re are, are writing as astrologers are teaching or, or our consultations giving readings, whatever it is, or even with our own work on understanding ourselves, we really want to bring all the, the most developed capacity for, for real rigor and compassion and, and, and ethical care, because this is a powerful gift. It’s not just a,

01:12:31 you know, just one more kind of, you know, potentially useful psychological trick or something like that. This is a, or, or, or, or technique. This is a, this is a powerful, a powerful mystery. It’s a kind of spiritual power in itself. And we have to raise ourselves to, to be adequate vessels of, of its expression through us.

01:13:02 And so that we can be forces of, of detriment in people’s lives and enhancement and, and not limiting them because we’re scared of Saturn or Pluto, transits or something in our own lives. And we haven’t gone through the inner work that is necessary to come to a richer, deeper understanding of the, of the energies that we’re speaking about. It’s a lifelong process for all of us,

01:13:29 but I think we can, we, it’s important to commit ourselves to being, to, to raising ourselves, to be worthy recipients of this gift that the universe is giving us.

01:13:42 [Amanda] It goes back to what you were saying in the beginning about the, those who are initiated into the mysteries. And in what you’re describing is, is there’s somewhat of a constant initiation at each new level of awareness.

01:13:59 We have to check ourselves and make sure that we’re not falling into patterns where the practice of astrology becomes more harmful than it is helpful. And that requires active, I think. And thank you for reminding us for voicing that and for, you know, standing as a beacon of that for us. And especially for people that are just getting into the field and starting to learn,

01:14:25 and there’s this real tendency to, oh, I, I know a few things about astrology. So now I’m going to present myself as the expert and it’s, it can get pretty tricky, you know, when, when is it okay for you to step into that role? When are you holding yourself back and feeling never worthy, you know, which is also another trap that people can fall into.

01:14:46 So, yeah, so it’s, you know, there’s, there’s this balancing act and each one of us having to assess within ourselves, what, what feels right and true, and sometimes fall down and make mistakes and then, you know, learn from it, hopefully, but Rick, this has just been such a delight and I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak with you and to learn from you and to learn from your experiences of life.

01:15:11 And I know that there is another great work that has been created out of the work that you’ve done. So out of cosmos and psyche, as one of the inspirations for the movie changing of the gods, which is a 10 part docu series, which will be available in at the end of February, you can sign up to get access to that documentary for free.

01:15:34 Now and, and if you’re interested, any of you, like you can go to AstrologyHub.com/ChangingoftheGods, but Rick, can you tell us just a little bit, you know, I know we’ll have other opportunities to talk about this, but a little bit about your, your involvement in the docu-series and why you feel it’s an important work to be shared with the world right now.

01:16:00 [Richard] Sure. The, the S the series was made by a group of filmmakers who particularly led by the co-founder of Bioneers the very admirable community of, of people working on behalf of ecological social justice. And it’s, the film is inspired by cosmos and psyche and focused on particularly how the, the tremendous kind of historical and social movements and developments of, of the last 10,

01:16:43 15 years are connected to the Uranus Pluto alignment. And also with the larger cyclical, the larger history of planetary cycles that those of you who’ve read cosmos and psyche can see that I tracked out that I, that I traced out. And so, while I didn’t this film, it’s, it, it informs the film in a kind of foundational way, but in a way,

01:17:16 the film is a kind of a marriage of cosmos and psyche with, with a kind of social ecological scientific impulse, or, or set of aspirations and movements that Bioneers in particular has been carrying. So there’s many other voices that are, that are in this documentary series. And each, each episode is focused on a particular aspect of, of our cultural historical life,

01:17:52 like one is on, on women’s rights and feminists and the women’s suffrage movement and liberation movements. Another is on civil rights in the abolitionist movement. And another one is on scientific revolutions and others on technological revolutions and another one’s on sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I mean, it’s, there’s a, it’s a whole, the 10 part series covers a number of major themes and traces them out historically,

01:18:27 as I did with cosmos and psyche, but cosmos, the psyche is done with words on a page, and this is done in a, you know, cinematic, you know, video film form with great, with many voices, many experts in different fields being interviewed and all the dynamics that the kind of dynamic communication that is possible when you’re, when you’re using film and music and,

01:19:01 and words all in and archival historical footage and so forth all in, in creative ways. And they’ve done, they’ve done a very fine job in, I, you know, admired a great deal. They, they did consult with me and I am interviewed, you know, in the frequently in the, in the series, but it it’s an independent work and it’s not,

01:19:28 it’s actually one that I could not have imagined how they would take my written book and translate that into a cinematic form. But I really admire how the, the team there, Kenny, the co-founder Bioneers working with, particularly, I think max Armin and Theo Baldacci both, both of whom were, were graduate students with me at CIS. And so they really knew they’ve not only know the how to make films,

01:20:05 but they also happened to be very educated within the architectural perspective and et cetera. And then also Louie Schwartzberg lent his cinema, cinema cinematography skills to the, to the task, and many others contributed. So that’s, that’s basically it, there’s going to be, as you say, there’s going to be the launch takes place in a series of steps during the month of February,

01:20:35 and then it’s kind of fully launched by, I think, February 22nd, I think. Yeah, that’s right. 2 22, 22. Easy to remember. Yes

01:20:43 [Amanda] Yes. Perfect. So if you’re interested in and viewing the 10 part, docu-series, there’s going to be a period of time where it is available for free, and you can go to, again, you can go to AstrologyHub.com/ChangingoftheGods,

01:20:58 and we’re particularly excited about it because of how it demonstrates astrological cycles through time and how those astrological astrological cycles correlate with events here on earth, and just giving further validity to astrology as a legitimate way to both analyze what’s happening, but also to look forward to what might happen. And I’d love to just finish with that question, Rick, the question that came from our community,

01:21:29 particularly, here’s a question from Becky, from our audience, our inner circle membership, actually, and Becky. Yes. Do you think that if there were a more universal and widespread understanding and acceptance of astrology, might certain world events have played out differently? So for example, with the recent Saturn Pluto transits or past Uranus Pluto transit, the archetypal energies may have manifested on the lighter end of these forms as opposed to their shadow sides being more evident.

01:21:59 So I think the question really being, if we have an awareness of these cycles and transits, before they happen, do you think that we as humanity, would it be playing out the higher potentials versus falling into the lower tendencies of these patterns?

01:22:19 [Richard] So I think in the same way that astrological knowledge can help each of us as an individual live more, more intelligently,

01:22:29 more consciously, so that we’re not puppets of the archetypes. And, and if you have a sense of the range of ways in which every planetary principle or force can come through, and that we as human beings have a, have a potential freedom or agency that we can, we can bring to the, to how they are expressed. Once you get that,

01:22:56 then having a deeper astrological knowledge can I think help us live better lives. And if that’s true on the individual level, I think it’s true on the collective level. When, when, when nine 11 happened under the Saturn Pluto opposition prior to this conjunction that coincided with a pandemic. I wrote an essay that got distributed a lot on the, it was called notes on the,

01:23:32 on the world trade center or something like that notes on the fall of the twin towers. And it’s on my cosmos and psyche.com website under the, in the essays page. And it, it, it got passed around a lot on the internet. And I kind of was among other things that I was doing in that kind of archetypal analysis of how much,

01:23:59 what had just happened was an expression of the Saturn Pluto alignment that was taking place. And how could we respond to it in a way that was faithful to the nature of Saturn and Pluto recognized what it’s about, but didn’t get caught in tendencies towards, for example, projecting the shadow just on that enemy, that’s over there. And, and, and then becoming,

01:24:27 getting into a kind of hyper armored militaristic a will to power that. And although the New York publishers were very interested in, in having that, that actually, that’s why they came back to me and said, we don’t want to wait any longer for cosmos and psyche to come out. So please here stop teaching for a while here’s enough money to stop teaching,

01:24:52 and you can write so you can finally finish cosmos and psyche, but that response was not necessarily the response that the Bush Cheney administration adopted in Washington and nor the world as a whole. I think we can. I mean, just seeing the patterns like how much I thought, God, we w we could so easily get into another Vietnam, for example,

01:25:21 which of course we ended up doing by going, you know, the, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and so forth. And because the Vietnam war began under the preceding Saturn Pluto opposition. And, you know, you could just see the cyclical pattern there. And I just, I wanted to bring that to consciousness there so that those who had ears to hear could live more,

01:25:46 more consciously knowing how we could respond in, in, in better ways. I really agree with the implication of the, of the person who asks us this question, which is that, or at least the possibility that was it, she was, was, was Becky, right. Was bringing up what happens for us as individuals happens for us as a society.

01:26:17 I think that’s always, always a potential. It’s not given Astrology. Doesn’t automatically make us better people any more than, you know, going to a church or taking, having an Ahayuasca journey automatically makes a person a better person. It takes moral and spiritual and psychological effort on our own part as well, but you bring those together and these become very powerful tools for the good,

01:26:50 so I, I do think that there, there, there is that possibility. I want to just also say you did a great job of describing what changing of the gods is about in terms of, you know, following the kind of bringing Astrology into, to a wider public audience in a way that, that they can recognize how it shines a light on these larger cyclical patterns in history and the connections between the planets movements and,
01:27:19 and histories movements. And one of the thing I didn’t say that might be important to convey here is simply that, you know, I F I

finished cosmos and psyche in 2005, and it was published in early 2006. So the whole Uranus square Pluto period happened after that. So in a way, what the film does is it takes well, here’s what was set out in cosmos and psyche happening under all the other Uranus Pluto alignments of the last 500 years or more.

01:27:57 And, and here are the archetypal themes that the author pointed out are, seem to be most vividly expressed during these big periods, like the French revolutionary APOC, you know, or the turn of the 20th century or, and so forth. And so let’s see what happens during the 20 teens and how, how much does that, that period of the 2007 to 2020,

01:28:29 roughly of that long square, how much does that kind of fulfill the, the historical patterning that Richard Tarnas discerned in history? And, and so that’s partly what the film is, is a kind of investigation of what actually did happen. And in that sense, it is a, it’s a kind of independent sequel to cosmos and psyche. And I think very,

01:28:55 very helpful in that way.

01:28:57 [Amanda] It’s very true. It’s definitely, it definitely fills in that gap of time, which is great. Rick, thank you so much for spending this much time with us. It has just been something that I have treasured, and I’m sure our community will treasure as well. It’s very exciting that we have the opportunity to see that that commentary on how cosmos and psyche is actually began to play out through the teens and into 2020 with changing of the gods,

01:29:28 and just looking forward to more opportunities to connect with you and your work. And if you haven’t picked up a copy of cosmos and psyche yet, it’d be great to do, but I also have a note to myself to pick up your first one, which was the setup for cosmos and psyche, which is called the Passion of the Western mind, which I didn’t realize was you don’t know, having the story in the context of why you wrote that it was really to set up cosms and psyches. It’s like, oh, I, I would love to read that now as well. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I look forward to

01:30:01 [Richard] My pleasure Amanda you’re,

01:30:04 you’re a great interviewer, made it very easy to share, share things. And thank you also for sharing your, your, your beautiful journey with respect to Astrology, because I think that that depicts quite eloquently, the, the role that Astrology can play and in kind of opening up to us a sense that, that sense that you had that, wow,

01:30:28 this is a kind of like the, the divine cares about me in a certain way, you know, and it’s paying attention like my, you know, my, my birth is, is meaningful in a larger cosmic context. That’s, that’s quite an, an important spiritual gift. And thank you for sharing that.

01:30:46 [Amanda] It’s, it’s what drives the work that we do at Astrology Hub.

01:30:51 That’s why it’s, there’s so much passion to sharing the gifts of astrology with the world, because, you know, for more people to feel like they’re actually connected in their lives matter and they, they they’re cared for that. I just think everything would be different.

01:31:06 [Richard] Yeah, you’re doing it. You’re doing great work there. Thanks. Thank you, Amanda.

01:31:12 [Amanda] Rick, thank you so much. And thanks to all of you for being here. Thank you for being a part of our community and as always thank you for making astrology a part of your life. We’ll catch you on the next episode. Take care, everybody.