Astrology: The Manifesto 2/4 by Patrice Guinard

4. The Threefold Nature of Knowledge

5. A Structural Model for Astrology

6. The Astral Matrix and Matrix-Based Reason

"The whole of being is present wherever there is true birth,
wherever an awakening happens (...) "To understand" not only
means to embrace and reunify multiplicity, but also to place the act
of knowing in a soil of experience lived as ancient and original:
less as a function of an historical antecedent brought to light
than through the relationship, itself ancient, which each soul has
with the forgotten strata, conscious or unconscious, of its own psyche."
(Françoise Bonardel: L'hermétisme)

In essence, reality impresses itself upon consciousness in three distinct modalities: as an object, as a sign, and as a state of being, which can expressed alternatively as an entity either physical, mental or psychic. On the basis of this delineation, one can infer the existence of three principle domains in the development of knowledge and three corresponding "sciences" which apply to them: the objective sciences, empirico-analytical (biochemical and physical sciences), which observe, measure, test and model material phenomena; the interpretative sciences, historico-hermeneutic (termed "social" or "humanistic"), which arise through working with the products of cultural activity and their interpretation; and the sciences of states of being, psycho-synthetic (astrology and its related disciplines), which perceive reality in relation to the totality of psychic being.[1]

To each of these types of science corresponds a type of archetypal organisation, or ideational structure, worked out or made explicit through three successive phases: a phase of observation, a phase of formalization, a phase of transformation.

1. CRYSTAL, or empirico-analytical structure, is the ideational form of the relations between objects, be they "natural" (as in the case of the physical sciences), or abstract (numbers, figures, functions and groups in mathematics). "To this realm of the object, seen as a mode of immanence, corresponds by its own right science in its theoretical aspect, which challenges reality and aims particularly at its objectness." [2] Three phases mark the scientific process:
- empirical observation and the recording of facts.
- the formulation, by means of induction, of laws which establish the modalities of variation in the diversity of objects and are organized around theories.
- experimentation and the transformation of the object with a view to establishing new interrelationships.

The ensemble of these processes tends to explain the functioning of object reality and to subdue and transform the object in its quality of resistance to the abstract or mental. By such means scientific reality is constructed through mediation on the part of the mind. Experimentation and observation in and of themselves necessarily include the layout of physical equipment and a specific mental disposition. The laws of physics, as a result, end up being applied by the experimentor to the reality perceived. Heisenberg emphasized that "phenomena" result from the interaction of the object experimented upon, the system of measurement, and the experimentor himself. It is theory which determines what ought to be observed.[3] According to Bachelard, science is born precisely from the rupture with received perception and constructs itself "against Nature." A supposition of recent creation (post-Keplerian and post-Newtonian) and by nature materialist, science has as its privileged object the mineral kingdom." [4] This circumstance explains why Crystal is always in process of development, oriented towards the future, involved in an unlimited process of construction and reconstruction of reality.

2. CODE, or historico-hermeneutic structure (linguistic, semiotic, socio-historical) is the ideational form of relations between signs within the context of a received socio-cultural network. Ferdinand de Saussure defined language as a system of signs, a social product, a code relatively independent of individual manifestations at the level of "parole" [word]. A linguistic unit has no reality independent of its relation to the whole: it is defined in the same instance by the place it occupies within the relational network of the language in question and by its distinctiveness from similar units in that network.[5] Three phases mark the process of cultural investigation:
- the collection and recording of available data (linguistic data, archives and documents of historical, sociological or ethnologic nature, and a variety of other cultural information.
- delineation of the elements collected and their comparison in relation to differences in meaning.
- the reorganization of those elements by means of their respective functions, and the interpretation of documents on the basis of that reorganization.

This process does not aim to explain a phenomenon, but rather to describe it and to interpret the data, which is to say, to elucidate the meaning of the diverse products of culture through the use of interpretative models which have been constructed. Code is extracted from the past, identified by forms which are recognized or discovered anew, and it is open to all new efforts at formalization and to any information capable of modifying its structures.

3. MATRIX, or psycho-synthetic structure (astrological), is the ideational form applied to relations between states of being. It reveals the organization of potential reality, which is potential, intangible, invisible, unconscious. Paul Valéry wrote in 1938: "Beneath any symbolic expression, beneath all knowledge and all feeling, lies a source of energy, its point of issue and the three or four forms that this energy can take, either independently or in association, and the three or four differentiated outflowings emerging from that source oppose it, react upon the outflow, etc." [6] Impressionistic awarenesses [impressionaux] are not psychic states, but rather "minimal" forms, of archetypal nature, limited in number, which innervate those states. Following the examples of Crystal and Code, three phases form the psycho-synthetic process:
- visualization, by means of "abstract observation" (Peirce), of the circular organisation of the psyche and the interdependence of its elements.
- the assignment by abductive reasoning of archetypal forms and their symbology.
- the integration of possibility by the distribution of units and perspectives.

Charles Peirce specified in his writings the necessary and logical existence of a faculty of abstract observation which assures the coherence of perceived reality and allows one "to discover what should be and not simply what is in the real world." [7] To this mode of perceiving reality corresponds reasoning by abduction, capable of identifying a reality which is unverifiable in terms of physical data. Abduction is distinguished from deduction, a mode of reasoning appropriate to formal logic (Aristotle, Leibnitz, etc.) and from induction, appropriate for the scientific model of experimentation. The rigor of the logician testifies in favor of the insistence by certain spiritualist thinkers on the preservation of what they call "symbolic imagination" (Henry Corbin). The astrological process no longer seeks to explain a phenomenon, neither to interpret data, but rather to understand an underlying reality, in so far as phenomena and cultural data have their source in the psyche. Matrix is at once present and outside of time: it aligns itself with the present moment while at the same time it carries forward a pre-existent and permanent foundation.

Wilhelm Dilthey, in his Kantian project of building a general anthropology, does not admit the aspect "psychic" in association with the concept "socio-historical," and he is content to put the explaining of Nature into opposition with the comprehension (Verstehen) of psychic life by means of lived experience (Erlebnis). [8] Now, there exist three levels: the explanation of the physical world, the interpretation of the cultural world, and the understanding of the psychic world. Likewise there exist three languages, i.e. three abstract modes of declination and mental abstraction of reality: the living languages, which permit communication and the transmission of ideas, the language of mathematics, which operates essentially on numbers and serves to highlight the variability of objects, and astrological language, the structures of which symbolize the transformations of the psyche.[9]

Astrology is the gateway to a structural comprehension of the psyche. Astrological understanding differs from the explanation of the physical sciences and from the interpretation of the humanistic sciences. To understand, in the astrological sense, is not to demonstrate, but rather to reveal or show. No hermeneutic or philosophical method, no analytical or statistical technique, can represent astrology without diminishing it. Matrix-based thinking has as its goal not to render uniform the enormous diversity of mental representations, but rather to preserve the organization of the multiplicity which exists beyond the representations themselves. It consists of thinking severally about the many. Astrology cannot be defined in any domain but its own: the egalitarian domain of the qualitative potentialization of psychic reality.

A number of contemporary astrologers, armed with statistics and scientific rationality, are mistaken about the nature of astrological knowledge and err also in their hope for a "justification" of their practices by the scientific community. Statistics offer nothing but partial "results," in the final analysis: "There can be no question of 'proving' astrology by those means; 'proof' ... emerges from the domain of physical fact, whereas astrology operates upon structures." [10] This inappropriate extension to astrology of the methods which are appropriate for the physical sciences stems from a faulty understanding of the nature of astrology and of physical reality itself. One does not measure lunarity (lunar influence) in the same way one measures barometric pressure. Affectivity and consciousness cannot be "explained" in mechanistic terms. Instrumentational methods and astro-statistical schemas do no more for the substance of astrological knowledge than charts of encephalographic variations do for approaching the knowledge of dreams or the physiological transformations which result from certain yoga postures. If planetary influences exist at the physical or macrophysical level, they do not derive from astrology, but rather from cosmobiology.[11] Contrary to the opinion commonly held and preemptorily affirmed, astrology is a serious body of knowledge: all knowledge about the human ultimately derives from the psyche, as Jung pointed out in his works, and disregard of this essential truth is the stumbling-block of modern research, if not its complete negation. So it is that academic psychology wanders in the desert of experimental theory, when it does not go lost on the sea of Freudian therapy.

At present there exists no model of causal explanation for astrology, and none of the physical theories proposed to date is really satisfactory: we may cite the elemental model of Ptolemy, a result of ideas of an astro-meteorological nature, the theory of stellar rays of Al-Kindi, and Kepler's model of harmonics. Even if it is likely, in the end, that science should discover a geo- or bio-magnetic explanation for the planet-wide integration of nervous system, cellular or molecular rhythms in living matter, that explanation would not serve to explain the psychic-astral transformations which operate at a different level of reality, nor could it legitimize any particular, definitive application in our understanding of natal issues and collective cycles. Likewise, neurobiology does not illuminate us with regard to the phenomena of consciousness. This autonomy of astrology vis-à-vis scientific fields does not imply that it is "anti-scientific", contrary to what scientists claim to be the case.[12]

5. A Structural Model for Astrology

"We do not intend to designate thereby a collection
of fully formed and immutable structures,
but rather a group of matrices from the basis of which
emerge structures that all relate to a single whole."
(Claude Lévi-Strauss: L'homme nu)

The demise of traditional ontology has been the cause of a widespread disenchantment of the world (Max Weber, Alexandre Koyré). The decline of global concepts such as "Nature" and "Cosmos" have prepared the emergence of Structure. What has been lost along the way in that substitution is the interdependence between man and his environment in a world that has become acosmic due to the abolition of any similarity between the microcosm and the "macanthrope" (Paracelsus). This circumstance has arisen from rejection of the notion of a universal harmony within which everything is interconnected and "inter-expressive," and from the intrusion of an antinomy, one might say an antipathy, between the visible and the invisible, where the latter is debunked. It is up to the modern world to come to terms with this new conceptual avatar.

The notion of structure, beginning with the received idea of a general organization of elements forming a totality, has been enriched and modified by its passage through disciplines as different from each other as are ethnology and mathematics, biology and sociology, linguistics and psychoanalysis. Structure interprets reality as a web of relationships among an unlimited number of elements; furthermore it supposes that none of these "anonymous" elements in and of itself has a direct and individual relationship to the whole. In this supposition, Structure becomes acosmic. Michel Serres defines the concept of structure in contradistinction to the concept of model, which is an illustration or realization of structure: "A structure is an operational ensemble of indeterminate meaning ... grouping elements, in whatever number, the content of which is not specified, and relationships, finite in number, unspecified with regard to their nature, but the function of which is defined, as well as certain operative results with regard to the elements. By supposing, then, that one specifies in a determined way the content of the elements and the nature of the relationships in question, one obtains a model (a paradigm) of the structure: which latter is thus the formal analogue of all the concrete models which it organizes." [13]

From its beginnings, astrology has met with various structures (the Zodiac of the Babylonians in the 5th century B.C., the Septenary and the system of Houses devised by the Greeks, etc.), but by reason of the practical considerations to which they lead, emphasis has been placed on models, to their detriment. Consequently, it is important to reorient thinking on these matters, from which proceed all attempts at formalization. I designate the four cardinal structures of astrology, which appeared as early as the time of the Greeks, by the terms Planetaries [French: Planétaire] (or, the ordered ensemble of the Planets), Dominion (or, the structured ensemble of the Houses), Cyclics [French: Cyclade] (or, the structured ensemble of the Cycles, Aspects and Planetary Ages), and, to be quite sure, Zodiac (or, the structured ensemble of the zodiacal signs).

These structures derive from an archetype which seems to be universal: that of the four modes of the differentiation of reality by consciousness. The Kantian naturalist Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), a precursor of ethnology, identifies by the term "milieu" (Umwelt) the result of a specific division of reality through perception: each organism creates its milieu and constructs its experience as a function of the initial conditions of its own perception. [14] Moreover, ethnologists have recognized the existence of four fundamental notions in pre-literate societies, four primordial categories of mind which lie at the source of cultural activity and social organization: (1) undifferentiated higher powers or mana, (2) the physical arenas under their possession, (3) the instances of their manifestation, and (4) their ordered distribution among human beings, who constitute the beings and objects of Nature. [15] In this view, then, reality is a continuum which perception differentiates in four specific modes. The study of animal behavior has enabled the realization that each species, and each individual as well, follows its own path. The study of human culture has demonstrated that it also follows a quaternary logic.

The "permanent frameworks of mental life" [16] result from an intuitive conception of what one can call conditioning milieux, these being Energy, Space, Time and Structure, which the Greeks designated by the terms kratos, topos, kaïros and cosmos. As a consequence, any manifestation of reality induces specific transformations of perception in the fields of energy (differentiation of forces), of space (differentiation of locale), of time (differentiation of moments and of phases), and of structure (differentiation of forms, or what is more, the coordination of forces, locales and moments). Each object is a complex agency of a given combination of force/structure and space/moment.

Physics maintains this concept by means of its four fundamental notions: mass (the measure of quantity of matter), length (measure of physical size), time (measure of duration) and temperature (measure of molecular motion and of the organization of matter). Mathematics as well, however, with its repertoire of numbers, geometric figures, analytical functions and algebraic groups offers analogies to the energetic, spatial, temporal and structural concepts of physics. Hence Crystal is a more developed representation of a primordial, original and archetypal predisposition.

A similar quadripartite division may be observed in the organization of languages: verbs (which indicate action, transformation, or stability); nouns (which designate an object, substance or person and localize them in a certain sense); adjective and adverbs (which indicate quality or conditions of a situation temporally variable in nature); and syntactical terms such as prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns (which organize discourse, establish relationships between elements and characterize speech contexts).

Crystal, Code and Matrix obey the same structural laws. In point of fact, the four conditioning milieux generate, with regard to astrology, an equivalent fourfold distribution, by means of (1) energetic polarization, (2) spatial organization into houses, (3) temporal periodisation, and (4) structural differentiation. Hence we have the Planets, the Houses, the Cycles and the Signs of astrology's structure. The planet is to astrology what the number is to mathematics, and what the verb is to language; the astrological house is the functional equivalent of geometrical figures in mathematics or the noun in a language. Similarly, signs, cycles, houses and planets, unequally distributed in a natal chart, each figure into their own psychic-astral perspective, their own world, in which they reflect the relationships they maintain with the external world.

The astrologer who is adrift in loose symbology is often incapable of distinguishing the ontological difference between a zodiacal sign and a planet. In point of fact, astrological elements operate in each person's consciousness according to specific modalities. Planetary forces translate a person's modes of perception and his parsing of the environment on the basis of the state and the transformations of his potential for activity. Astrological houses translate into astrological terms a person's points of actualization and integration with the environment, i.e. his instances of existential engagement and points of departure. Cyclical indicators (aspects, transits, etc.) translate a person's modes of evolution and his temporal probabilities. Zodiacal signs translate a person's modes of reaction and behavior, and of identification and aspiration, in so far as they synthesize the other factors mentioned. To state the matter in another way: Planets represent one's modes of perceiving of reality; Houses represent modes of relating to the perceived reality; Cycles represent modes of variation which occur in those relations; Signs represent modes of fixation after the variations have stabilized.

It is structure which distributes the elements and active agents of astrology: forms, moments, locales and forces are ruptures within a single continuum, scissor cuts into the fabric of reality. Planetaries, Dominion, Cyclics and the Zodiac participate in the same Matrix from a different angle. [17] Decidedly, there is nothing but planets in "the astrological heavens." However, a planet operates simultaneously as an energetic force, as a domain of locality, as the phase of a cycle, and as a zodiacal form, because it participates in all four conditioning modes of organic integration; and for the living being, no structure exists which is not integrated. If Houses, Cycles and Signs can appear as the spatial, temporal or structural modalities of effective planetary elements, the Planets themselves are the obvious signals of the process of polarization. Similarly, if it is valid to conceive of reality from the angle of energetics (i.e., the primacy of force, matter and tangibility), or space (i.e., the result of fields of attraction and repulsion), or even temporal (i.e., the result of cycles of variation), it is nonetheless from the standpoint of structure that these various differentiations present themselves. Furthermore, it is structure which shows this differentiation to be quadripartite by including itself as the fourth and final category.

In a similar fashion, that which characterizes astrological structure -- and distinguishes the structural modes of mathematics and language -- is its periodic nature (a point ignored by Serres' definition). The Zodiac is an annual cycle, Dominion is a daily cycle, planetary cycles have various periods (e.g., a month for the lunar cycle, twelve years for the cycle of Jupiter, thirty years for the cycle of Saturn, etc.). The various qualities associated with the signs, planets and houses recur after a determinate period of time. Contrary to the movement of a pendulum, the cycle of respiration, or the rise and fall of the tides, all of which represent a simple to and fro, the astral cycle represents a true alternation of independent phases. It is this circularity which confers upon astral structures their homogeneity.

This cyclical structure is imprinted on the neural organization, which reproduces the periodic variations of the planets. Neuro-psychological integration of geo-solar rhythms translates itself into a continuous psychic stimulus -- astral incidence -- and into a structuring of the nervous system through pre-conscious mental states, which in turn give rise to psycho-mental representations. The composite of a structural astrology lies in the assignment and coherent organization of these psychic "vectors" which underpin mental representations, in that they always result from the mediation between those inner states and the resistance to them in a human being's consciousness, stimulated by pre-conscious impulses and enervated by a contingent physical environment.

Astrological symbols are made active within operative structures by matrix-based thought. However, these structures do not have a determinate meaning in and of themselves, despite the inevitable mediation of some cognitive process. The structures are antecedent to all interpretive systems and specified contexts, which fact explains the extreme plasticity of astrological discourse. There are twelve labors which Hercules must complete. [18] Astrological symbology is systematic ipso facto by virtue of its internal cohesiveness and functional interdependence. Locales, lodged in structure, predetermine the elements which will inhabit them and the functions of which they become representative. The articulation of symbols pre-exists the determination of their content. Any meanings put forth are effects (i.e., simultaneously consequential products resulting from the act of perception) and derive from structural relationships. It is for that reason that astrological discourse has shown itself capable of adaptation to the most diverse mentalities and cultural contexts. No other system of thought has matched the continuity or ubiquity of astrology, this algebra of the human spirit, the presence of which has been found within cultures of the greatest diversity imaginable, from the Chinese to the Arabic, from the Babylonian to the Hindu.

The relative permanence of astrological structures [19] stands in contrast to the limitless variability of its interpretative content. Those structures underlie various models which the history of astrology is only now beginning to study after the slow start made at the beginning of the 20th century. There does not exist a single astrology, but rather a pre-consciousness within the human being - since that state is imprinted into the psychic reality of each person - which is imbued with many cultural variables and continues its existence through many diverse forms of modeling. There are as many models of astrology as there are cultures in which astrology has been cultivated and as there are astrologers who have applied to it their faculties of thought. Contrary to the assertions of Franz Boll and Carl Bezold (1917), Martin Nilsson (1943), Otto Neugebauer (1957), or Wilhelm Gundel (1966), astrology is not a creation of the Greeks of Alexandria. [20] It emerged from the divinatory practices and predictive literature of the Akkadians (ca. 2000-1500 B.C.). Mesopotamians already had a long astrological history before the introduction of cyclic, zodiacal (i.e., horoscopic) astrology in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. Astrology evolved much more during its Mesopotamian phase than during the period between Ptolemy and Morinus; in the final analysis, it is not more Greek than it is Babylonian or Arabic. Similarly, there exists a specific form of astrology which corresponds with the cultural realities of modern and "post-modern" society of the 20th and 21st centuries.

What are the minimum conditions for an adequate modern theory of astrology? Most decidedly, more is needed than vague spiritualist beliefs which echo the old hermetic adage, "what is below is as above," transmitted to us by the recent revival of interest in Jungian synchronicity. More, as well, is needed than the act of faith made by empiricists, which says, "It works," and even, "It works perfectly," often ascribing that degree of success to the supposed psychological talents of the interpreter. Beyond doubt, we need more than the barbaric tests of astro-statistics, whose outdated positivistic assumptions cannot hope to produce any real understanding of the subject of their inquiry. A theory of astrology -- beyond an empirical explanation of the integration of planetary rhythms by living matter (which comes from physics and biology) -- should be capable of producing hypotheses about the possible functioning of those processes, and, moreover, should be able to draw consequences from them for a conceptual model of astrology. An astrologer may not know how planetary indicators operate in point of fact. He must, however, not be uncognizant of how they cannot operate.

Several physical models have recently been proposed. The Italian chemist Giorgio Piccardi (1962) has attempted to show the organic integration of cosmic rhythms at the molecular level in water, which he supposes to be the receptive mechanism for terrestrial magnetism. [21] The astrologer Frank McGillion (1980) has supported the thesis that the pineal gland integrates planetary rhythms into the organism beginning with the third month of pregnancy. [22] The biologist Rupert Sheldrake (1981, 1988 and 1991) has defended the principle of formative causality and supports the idea of the existence of a morphogenic field in each organism and of a kind of intrinsic genetic memory which is organized through repetition (a theory which does not refer explicitly to astrology). [23] The biologist Etienne Guillé (1983, 1989 and 1990) has analyzed rhythmic activity in cells and shows the existence of specific vibratory types linked to planetary cycles and integrated at the molecular level in DNA. [24] The astronomer Percy Seymour (1986, 1988 and 1992) has conceptualized a process by which the fetal nervous system becomes sensitized through resonance with the geo-magnetic field, a system of interactions in which supposedly planetary gravitational forces play a role. [25]

These theories are squarely rejected by the astro-statistician Geoffrey Dean on the pretext that they do not satisfy certain questionable practices in astrology. "But in principle all physical theories fail, because there is no possible way they could work when the subject is a company or a country or a question. There is nothing for physical forces to act on." [26] Now, this circumstance does not represent failure on the part of the theories in question, but rather points to a lack of reflection about the models employed. Dean and his colleagues take astrology and its practices as a whole, without questioning the coexistence of different models, past and present, even within a single astrological tradition. Indeed, any coherent physical theory of astrology would permit the elimination of a certain number of controversial appendages to the discipline. e.g., the horoscopes of countries, inanimate objects, the practice of progressions and directions, etc.

Dean's ostensible criticism simply legitimizes lazy interpretative practices and attempts to reverse the old hermetic axiom. "As below, so above": It would not be astral incidence which leads the mind to an astrological , anthropomorphic [27] conceptualization of cultures and human beings. Rather, these latter would themselves project "upon the heavens" their socio-cultural configurations and organization. In addition to the fact that Dean's thesis -- received, one might add, with particular welcome by the anti-astrological camps and those of socio-ethnological orientation -- has no basis in historical proof, it invests in a spiritualist notion of astrology which itself seems untenable.

The structure of any domain of knowledge, according to Deleuze, is defined as a "virtualness of coexistence which preexists the beings, objects and products of that domain." [28] Symbolic astrology is not organized on the basis of disparate or contingent content; it is pre-organized by the incident elements which predispose its symbols to assume a place within a complex of necessary relations. The contents -- themselves variable and contingent -- become differentiatied not by their inherent characteristics, but rather by reason of the function which they exercise within the model. Consequently, the models are always more or less aleatory. The structures enable one to model the unknown on the basis of articulations about what is known and is stabilized by the model -- whence the ability of astrology to identify cause in anticipation of effect. The structures which underpin the model result from a vision of the Matrix, which itself is simultaneously the Gestalt of the structures themselves -- or, rather, of the same structure declined according to one or another of the four conditioning modes in which reality may be perceived -- together with the archetypal mould of the psyche. To state it another way, it is the reserve of potential from which can arise variations in the concretization of structures. The astral Matrix does not derive from reasoning or experimentation, but rather emerges like the filigree of an ice crystal; it reveals itself and traces its pattern as a function of the state of comprehension of the consciousness which perceives it.

"No trendy novel, no synthetic temporal hodgepodge;
no, the conflict of Achilles with his epoch,
no synthesis, but rather a 'distribution',
thanks to him!" (Robert Musil)

In the 14th century Europe experienced a marked upsurge of astrological prediction simultaneously with the outbreak of several wars, epidemics and famines. It was generally believed -- and not only among astrologers -- at the end of the century, hence ex post facto, that the conjunction of 1345 caused the Black Death of 1348. Prediction, be it at the individual or the collective level, has remained the siren's song of modern astrologers, who failed quite miserably to predict the Second World War [31], despite the warnings given by the circumstances in Algeria, Indochina or the Gulf. Even the scientists John Gribbin and Stephan Plagemann believed in the astrological prediction of a devastating earthquake in California on the basis of the planetary alignment in 1982. [32] They later analyzed their error in a work published the following year. And, "curiously" enough, two of the most famous astrological predictions of history are fabrications. Pierre d'Ailly never in fact predicted the outbreak of the French Revolution, nor did Johannes Stoeffler predict a universal flood and the end of the world in 1524. [33]

Matrix-based astrology differs in nature from that of divinatory practices. It does not have the same cognitive design and does not put into play the same set of psycho-mental propensities. It is not more conjectural -- which many practitioners claim to be the case -- than it is divinatory, which its adversaries claim to be true, along with Pico. It reveals a reality continually present and familiar to consciousness, but does not predict a reality extrinsic to itself. It is not astromantic; it remains contextualized in the matrix-based logos, without incorporating the experimental nomos of astronomy or the manteia of augury found in divinatory practice, even though it maintains certain relationships with them. [34]

Jung insisted on understanding that the principle of synchronicity explains nothing, but only permits awareness of the manifestation of meaningful coincidences. He also rejected the possibility of applying synchronicity to astrological reality: "Despite the fact that we know nothing exact about what the validity of a natal horoscope rests upon, it is still no less conceivable that a relationship of causal character might exist between planetary aspects and psycho-physiological dispositions. Consequently, one would do well to consider the results which issue from astrological theory as phonemona relevant not to synchronicity, but perhaps to causality. Wherever one can reasonably suppose a cause, synchronicity becomes unlikely in the extreme." [35] The idea of an acausal connection between diverse events has its source in the experiments of Joseph Rhine on telepathy and extrasensory perception. The results of Jung's statistical research on married couples should, according to Jung himself, be interpreted while taking into account randomness and the unconscious intentions of the experimenter. [36] The statistical result, "desired" by the emotionally involved experimenter, would be in part an imaginative projection of his own unconscious. That circumstance disqualifies from the outset the application of statistics to astrology: "The verification by statistical means of astrological 'truths' is open to question, and even improbable. ... Their superstitious use (be it in the prediction of the future or in the establishment of certain facts in terms of psychological possibilities) is fallacious." [37]

Synchronicity is not a model for understanding astrology; it is only an interpretation of the occurrence of two events which appear to consciousness simultaneously, without the reason for their appearance being evident. I shaved this morning at the exact moment when the cat scratched at the window." There is nothing significant in such a construct. Synchronicity concerns two synchronous events which I interrelate and interpret as being linked by significance. Let us take another example: I fell in love with Helen when Venus rising was transiting my natal Sun. The position of Venus rising and its projection onto the orbit traced by the transit of my Natal Sun is not an event, an experiential fact, but rather a calculation, an astrological observation, and also represents the result of an astrological theory. The proposition according to which I have fallen in love with Helen, in the present moment, is no longer an external event: it becomes a state or condition, an internal event. There is no synchronicity involved because there is no external, experiential event, because I do not know the position of Venus until I calculate it, and because my proposition of causality does not correspond to an empirical observation, but rather to a calculation and a theory.

The uselessness of the Jungian notion of synchronicity for astrology puts to shame the tendency of many contemporary astrologers who hold it up like a battle sword and claim it as a panacea for the justification of astrological reality. Certain astrologers go so far as to believe that it could justify the moment chosen for a consultation. As it is defined by Jung, synchronicity would be more applicable to Yi King or to so-called "horary" astrology than to natal astrology. Jung, perhaps by reason of ignorance, does not refer in his writing to the astrological practice of chart calculation for questions. [38]

Astrology derives from a paradigm completely distinct from those of hermeneutics or physics. The notions of coincidence between significant events and of the influence of physical forces do not suit it. [39] There is no "external influence," but only formative internal incidence, that is to say, the organization of structural effects consequent to the impression upon the nervous system of planetary cycles. [40] Astral reality does not influence the physical; it conditions and shapes the physical. This concept invalidates the argument of St. Augustine, taken up anew by Pico della Mirandola, in which an astrologer is incapable of determining the sex of an individual on the basis of his or her natal chart. A astro-psychic impression is not the physical imprint of "influences," but rather a transitory interior state. There is no chart imprint made at the moment of birth, but rather an integration, both conditional and occasional (in the sense of the word used by Malebranche), of differentiated endopsychic forms, which render themselves manifest by means of their repetition and their frequency. Astral incidence requires a rhythmic and system approach.

What then comes of all this with regard to the nature of astrology? It is not a science, because it is not subject to the principle of empirical proof; its models are not susceptible to "falsification" [41], although they are so to a greater degree than that given in empiricist literature à la Popper. Astrology is not a religion, because it propounds no revealed doctrine nor indeed any specific body of belief, and requires neither clergy, temple nor ritual. Neither is it a philosophy, i.e. a conceptualization of reality, which relativizes the value of a rationality for which the ultimate criterion of validity is physical evidence. But at the same time, astrology is indeed a type of science, religion and philosophy; i.e., a conceptualization of reality which requires techniques of analysis borrowed from astronomy and which assumes a conviction of the existence of resonance and response between the rhythms of the geosolar environment and the psyche. Astrology is a specific form of rationality which admits as a condition a priori the structural differentiation of an archetypal matrix. It has recourse neither to experimental reason, nor to faith, nor to discursive reason, but rather to matrix-based reason.

It may occur to some that astrology seems like a religion, that it manifests as a kind of metaphysics, or might perhaps be a critical science in its essence, a "quasi-science." These perceptions arise by reason of astrology's triple nature [42] and because it has been thought of as a rival to philosophy, Christianity and science, for which reason it has been attacked successively by the Greek Skeptics, the Fathers of the Church, and by modern rationalism. Indeed, the epistemological status of astrology has changed according to the standpoint of those who oppose it. For the Skeptics Carneades and Sextus Empiricus, astrology merits attack within a general critique of consciousness and knowledge, while the Christian apologists Tatian and Tertullian abominate it equally with Greek philosophy as polytheistic paganism. The mechanist philosopher Pierre Gassendi, the Jesuits Jacques de Billy and Jean François, the Gassendist François Bernier, the historian Jean-Baptiste Thiers, the skeptic Pierre Bayle, or the Abbé Laurent Bordelon, who represent modern anti-astrological rationalism in France, all assign astrology to the domain of the irrational and the superstitious. [43] The rise of mechanist monism marks the beginning of the development of modern rationality, an ideological conglomeration including emerging science, materialist philosophy and Christian religion, which is pursued even in contemporary historical exegesis. [44] The verdict without trial passed on astrology occurs naturally and conjointly with the decline of metaphysics and spirituality under rationalist "enlightenment" and positivist obscurantism, or the grey dullness of thought particular to the 20th century. In the span of four centuries, the perception of astrology's status has changed in step with transformations in consensus thought and ideological bents -- no longer error, but rather illusion in the 18th century, idiocy in the 19th, absurdity in the 20th.

Matrix-based judgment differs from the synthetic judgment of Kant by reason of its requirement for distribution (i.e. assignment on the basis of differentiated value) according to the number and nature of the data given, as well as by its need for the objectification of reality, of which it reproduces the immanent order, even if this order derives in its primary instance from the structure of the human psyche. It is not rational, but rather metarational, i.e., it presupposes not an adequate representation of the concepts and objects of sensory experience, but instead a coherence, expressed in symbolic terms, of the internal and external experience of reality. The neutrality of matrix-based judgment, i.e., the mode of objectivity characteristic of its qualitative distributions based on value, differs from the mode of objectivity characteristic of science. The experimental process of science deconstructs reality and reassembles the constituent phenomena according to quantitative criteria. The matrix-based process distributes those phenomena according to qualitative criteria. John West and Jan Toonder observe that only those people "who have never built a cathedral, done a dervish dance, or meditated alone for half an hour deny the possibility of such a qualitative difference." [45] These distributions do not derive from a philosophical consideration of ideas, nor from a scientific type of experiment on definite objects of which the variations are observed. The distributions are made by the mind directly. They appear to consciousness as a consequence of the continual stimulation and psychic structuring by pre-conscious astral impressions.

The Czech philosopher and pedagogue Jan Komenský (1592-1670), known by the Latin form of his name, Comenius, developed a methodological framework for describing reality which present certain similarities with Peirce's abstractive observation and my own concept of matrix-based thought. By means of what Comenius calls syncrisis, a sort of global process of analyzing reality, it becomes possible to apprehend reality which cannot be directly observed by means of examining the reality which is apparent to observation, provided that one can distinguish at the source of both the same "archetypes." This synthetic critical method opposes the tendency toward the atomization of knowledge and the development of excessive specialization. It does the same for matrix-based thought, which orders multiplicity through the use of provisional regroupings. The function of value distribution takes on greater importance than the present and contingent representation made of the object under examination. Archetypes are the parameters or poles for the process of value distribution. It is not in the nature of matrix-based thought to produce taxonomies in the form of catalogues, inventories or classifications. Instead, it insists on the necessity of distributing values in a manner consonant with its synchronic, diachronic modalities. It does not refer solely to the actual state of the perceived reality, but also refers to the precession of that reality. As a result, its distinctions are rooted in a twofold dimensionality, present and atemporal, of the reality in question.

Matrix-based reason is by no means a sort of occult quality appropriate only for astrologers. It operates in thought at all levels, especially among philosophers. We have evidence of this in Pythagoras, Plato, Paracelsus or Kepler, but also in Democritus (criteria of differentiation among atoms), Hippocratus (theory of humors), Aristotle (theory of the causes of motion), Damascius (theory of unity), Ramon Llull (theological combinatories), Nicholas of Cues (theory of the ten fields of knowledge), Campanella, Descartes (rules of the scientific method), Leibnitz (universal characteristics), Kant (theory of categories), Hegel, Fourier ... As soon as thought proceeds from some source other than discursive reasoning, and there appear meaningful distinctions, the provenance of which cannot be traced back to discursive logic, then thought is functioning in the matrix-based mode. To put it another way: these distinctions derive from an archetypal distribution of values (by 3, 4, 8, 10, 12 ...) of an astro-psychic nature, which conditions matrix-based judgment. The astral matrix is in its first instance structured by the principle of four, and the matrix itself structures psychic phenomena, which means that it consequently structures any given set of sociocultural and psycho-mental products. In Mesopotamia, astrology exercised a function more collective than individual in nature. Nowadays, astrology has been reduced to a kind of individual therapy on the basis of the natal chart. The so-called "humanistic" sciences are concerned with planetary cycles and the astrological approach. One could conceive a methodology for an astro-based history, geography, psychology, sociology ... [46] Astral agents modulate and structure the human world and are the safekeepers of anthropological knowledge. Matrix-based logic indeed requires a reorganization of language and knowledge, a redistribution of mental, social and cultural representations, and, as a consequence, a reevaluation of concepts customarily used in a unilateral sense or in dualistic terms.

Every field of investigation, all conceptual problematics, any activity of mind calls forth a quaternary archetype at the very point that it relates to the human psyche. Astrology is the study of the effects of the quaternary structuring of the psyche, i.e., the quadripartition of reality by the human mind. Four perspectives of irreducible nature, which astral incidence distributes in specific proportions in the case of each individual, pre-exist in consciousness every encounter with experiential reality. The perception of these four perspectives is for Carlos Castaneda (1925-1998), interpreter of the Bardo Thödol [the Tibetan Book of the Dead], a matter of attitudinal equanimity: " To be a nagual implies that one has no point of view to defend." [47] Paracelsus insisted on the quaternary structure of consciousness; the quaternary division of the "macanthrope" [primordial man], astro-psychic in nature, underpins any quadripartition of sociocultural phenomena. [48] Since the days of Parmenides and Anaxagoras, Greco-European thought has tended to reason by process of exclusion. A number of mistakes have resulted from the haste to unify multiplicity by putting into place artificial dualities. [49] In contradistinction to dualist problematics, matrix-based reasoning consists of asking oneself a priori about the legitimacy of comparison between entities perceived within a single field of application.

The matrix-based logos is by nature pythagorean. It derives from a metaphysics of the Tetrad and presupposes the co-presence of four archetypal forms which guide the world and orient thought. The specificity and strength of astro-philosophy lies in its neutrality; it does not privilege a particular viewpoint and maintains equidistance from each of the four cardinal perspectives, the twelve zodiacal perspectives, the ten planetary perspectives, etc. To be yet more precise, equality is the mental attitude which consists in conceiving of the "quadriversity" of points of view, all the while remaining neutral before the four qualities of the human spirit. So the four psychic tonalities, or inner voices, transform themselves into four directions, or conceptual pathways. And the center remains veiled, invisible. In that framework, matrix-based discourse appears in its critical dimension as capable of pointing out not the errors, but rather the inadequacies and the unidimensionality of voice in this or that discourse or cognitive system. It is hence in a position to evaluate -- and in so doing becomes "judicial" -- not what is said or thought, but rather what fails to be said or thought.

[2] Martin Heidegger, Essais et conférences [=Essays and Lectures], French translation published by Gallimard, 1958, p. 62. « Text

[3] "Natural laws which, in the theory of quanta, we formulate mathematically, no longer concern the elementary particles themselves, but rather the knowledge we have of them." (Werner Heisenberg, in La nature dans la physique contemporaine, French translation from the German, Gallimard, 1962, p. 18. [For the original English work, cf. Physics & Philosophy: the Revolution in Modern Science, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962.)] « Text

[4] in La formation de l'esprit scientifique [= The Formation of the Scientific Mind], Vrin, 1938; 1983. « Text

[6] in Cahiers, "Psychologie", edited by Judith Robinson, Gallimard, 1973, vol. 1, p. 1067. « Text

[7] in Ecrits sur le signe [= Writings on the Sign], translated and edited by Gérard Deledalle, Le Seuil, 1978, p. 121. « Text

[8] in Le monde de l'esprit [= The World of the Mind], French translation from the German, Aubier, 1947, vol. 1, p. 150. « Text

[9] "Genetic language" (a product of the organization of the DNA molecule) is not one of these, because it does not result from the creative operation which the intellect sets into motion in order to transmit cognitive content. « Text

[10] Daniel Verney, Fondements et avenir de l'astrologie [= Foundation and future of Astrology], Paris, Fayard, 1974, p. 284. « Text

[11] The current specialist in astro-cosmobiological research is Theodor Landscheidt; see, for example, his Sun-Earth-Man: a Mesh of Cosmic Oscillations, London: Urania Trust, 1989. « Text

[12] We astrologers think that it is among scientists, especially particle physicists and graph theorists, and not among professors of philosophy, that the true metaphysicians of this century are hidden. « Text

[14] Jakob von Uexküll, Mondes animaux et monde humain [= Animal Worlds and the Human World], French translation from the German, Denoël, 1956. « Text

[15] Cf. Marcel Mauss, "De quelques formes primitives de classification" in Année Sociologique, 1903; Oeuvres, Minuit, 1968-1969, 3 vols.; and especially, Émile Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, 1912; Paris, P.U.F., 1968. [English translation published as The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, New York: Free Press, 1995.] « Text

[16] Émile Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, 1912; Paris, P.U.F., 1968, p. 628. « Text

[17] This is why the astrological theory of rulership seems to be the keystone of the entire structure. « Text

[18] The idea that Nature, the Universe-God, and more specifically the stars, are the basis of all ancient cults, mythologies and religions, has been put forth by the Scorpio historian Charles-François Dupuis (1742-1809) in his work Origine de tous les cultes, ou Religion universelle (3 vols, Paris, H. Agasse, an III [i.e. 1794]): "All peoples have upheld the idea that the cause of all that which happens, is born and grows here below is to be found in the stars." (vol. 1, p. 83) Cf. the same work for the relationship between the twelve labors of Hercules and the zodiacal signs. [An English translation of Dupuis' work has appeared as The Origin of All Religious Worship, New York: Garland, 1984, a reprint of the 1872 edition published in New Orleans.] « Text

[19] There are important variations within the structures one finds in a single "astrological culture," particularly with regard to Dominion, the Planetaries and the Cyclics. The idea has been put forward that the Chinese, the Egyptians and the Hebrews (cf. the 10 Sephiroth of the Sepher Yeshira) and the Valentinian Gnostics had esoteric knowledge of the trans-Saturnian planets. The Hindu Brhatsamhita (paragraph 68) enumerates 10 relationships: those of the 5 elements to the 5 planets, those of the Sun and Moon, those of Vishnu, Indra and Yama. Cf. Louis Renou, Anthologie Sanskrite, Payot, 1947, p. 363. « Text

[20] Cf., for example, Wilhem Gundel: "Learned astrology (...) is a child of Hellenism.", in Astrologumena: die astrologische Literatur in der Antike und ihre Geschichte [= Astrologumena: Astrological Literature in Antiquity and Its History], Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1966, p. 1. « Text

[21] in The Chemical Basis of Medical Climatology, Springfield: Thomas, 1962. « Text

[23] Cf., for example, La mémoire de l'univers (London, 1988), French translation from the English published by Le Rocher, Monaco, 1988. [English original, cf.: The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature, New York: Vintage Books, 1989.] « Text

[24] Cf. for example L'alchimie de la vie [= The Alchemy of Life] and Le langage vibratoire de la vie [= The Vibratory Language of Life], Monaco, Le Rocher, 1983 and 1990. « Text

[25] Cf. for example Astrology: the Evidence of Science, 1988; revised ed., London, Arkana, 1990. « Text

[26] Geoffrey Dean, Peter Loptson and Ivan Kelly, "Theories of Astrology," in Correlation v. 15, no. 1, 1996, p. 24. « Text

[27] Astrology is anthropo-morphic in the truest sense of the term. It is so without needing to apologize for the fact, despite the puerile invective of certain of its detractors among the rationalists, who happen to be ignorant of the subjectivist nature of large parts of scientific thought. « Text

[28] Gilles Deleuze, "A quoi reconnaît-on le structuralisme? [= How Is Structuralism Recognized?]" in François Châtelet (dir.), Histoire de la philosophie [=History of Philosophy], Hachette, 1973, vol. 8, p. 313. « Text

[29] Cf. Carl Gustav Jung, Synchronicité et Paracelsica [=Synchronicity and Paracelsica], French translation published by Albin Michel, 1988, pp. 43, 47, 271. « Text

[30] In Énnéades II 3.1, French translation published by Belles Lettres, 1964, p. 28. « Text

[31] The unfortunate Léon Lasson announced in 1937 "fifteen years of peace for Europe" (in Astrologie mondiale [=Mundane Astrology], Brussels, Revue Demain, p. 161. « Text

[33] Thorndike has shown that Johannes Stoeffler (1452-1531) had wrongly been credited with -- and still is credited with -- the announcement of a universal deluge for the year 1524 in his Almanach nova plurimis annis venturis inservientia [Ulm, 1499]. Cf. A History of Magic and Experimental Science, New York, Columbia University Press, 1941, v. 5, p. 181. Cf. the text in question and its French translation in Pierre Brind'Amour, Nostradamus astrophile [= Nostradamus the Astrophile], Ottawa, Presses de l'Université, and Paris, Klincksieck, 1993, p. 203. In a pamphlet published in Tübingen in 1523 the astrologer of Justingen denies ever having predicted a flood or encouraged the superstitious astrology given to sensationalist predictions. The "Quarrel of the Conjunction of 1524" (Mars, Jupiter and Saturn at 9-10 degrees of Pisces) has given rise, especially from the year 1520 forward, to an abundant literature (reviewed by Gustav Hellman in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Meteorologie [=Contributions to the History of Meteorology], Berlin, Behrend, 1914, vol. 1, p. 25-67). As for the famous prediction by Pierre d'Ailly [Petrus Alliacus, 1350-1420] for the year 1789, it remains extremely vague in its formulation: "There will be numerous upheavals and remarkable changes in the world, primarily with regard to laws and religious sects" (in Concordantia astronomie cum hystorica narratione [1414], Augsburg, 1490, chap. 60; cited in Laura Smoller, History, Prophecy and the Stars, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 194, p. 194). The prediction is the result of the application of Albumasar's theories on cycles, in particular the grand cycle of Saturn of 300 years (hardly used at all nowadays), equal to 10 sidereal revolutions. It does not announce specifically the French Revolution, but rather the coming of the Antichrist (cf. Laura Smoller, op. cit., p. 105-106), even if one might raise the objection that they are one and the same. « Text

[34] Which does not preclude the possibility that true voyants and visionaries may predict the future using astrology to support their predictions. We are reminded of Nostradamus, who used it in a century in which astrology flourished. « Text

[35] in Synchronicité et paracelsica [=Synchronicity and Paracelsica], French translation published by Albin Michel, 1988, p. 59 (cf. also p. 272). « Text

[36] It seems moreover that the most significant "results" have not been analyzed; viz. the disporportion in the distribution of conjunctions and oppositions, and the minimums laid out for the Sun - Sun conjunction and opposition, the planet of social identity. (Ibid., figure II, p. 63). « Text

[37] Carl Jung, in Correspondance [=Letters], letter of 15 November 1958, French translation published by Albin Michel, 1996, vol. 5, p. 72-73. « Text

[38] This branch of astrology, called "horary astrology," concerns subjects whose data is not based on birth, but on the moment at which the subject is present for analysis. « Text

[39] The many contradictions which result from these notions and the models they underpin are the great joy of anti-astrologers (cf. Geoffrey Dean and Peter Loptson, "Theories of Astrology," in Correlation v. 15, no. 1, 1996). « Text

[40] Raymond Abellio (in Solange de Mailly-Nesle, L'être cosmique [= The Cosmic Being], Paris, Flammarion, 1985, p. 119) has understood that there existed in the past three conceptions of astrology, hierarchized as follows: casualist or "influential" astrology (primary); symbolical astrology (intermediate) ; "structuralist" astrology (superior). « Text

[41] Karl Popper takes astrology as the badge of the non-scientific (in Conjectures et réfutations [=Conjectures and Rebuttals], London, Routledge, 1963; 4th ed. 1972; French translation published by Payot, 1985). « Text

[42] St. Jerome (347?-420), the translator of the Bible into Latin [known as the Vulgate], had a presentiment of this triple orientation when he announced in his Prologus galeatus that astrology "is affirmed by dogma, explained by method, confirmed by experience." « Text

[43] Pierre Gassendi (Animadversiones, including the De vanitate astrologorum, Leiden, 1649), Jacques de Billy (Le tombeau de l'astrologie judiciaire [= The Death Knell of Judiciary Astrology], Paris, Michel Soly, 1657), Jean François (Traité des influences celestes [= Treatise on Celestial Influences], Rennes, 1660), François Bernier (Abregé de la philosophie de Mr Gassendi, seconde partie [= Résumé of the Philosophy of Mr. Gassendi, second part], Paris, Estienne Michallet, 1675), Jean-Baptiste Thiers (Traité des superstitions [= Treatise on Superstitions], Paris, Dezallier, 1679), Pierre Bayle (Pensées diverses sur la comète [of 1680] [= Various Thoughts on the Comet], Rotterdam, Leers, 1682), Laurent Bordelon (De l'astrologie judiciaire [= On Judiciary Astrology], Paris, Louis Lucas & Etienne Ducastin, 1689). « Text

[44] Robert Lenoble evokes the "hiatus which exists between astrology and the reason of religion and science" (in Mersenne ou la naissance du mécanisme [= Mersenne, or, The Birth of the Mechanism], Paris, Vrin, 1943 ; 1971, p. 128). « Text

[46] cf. my doctoral thesis: L'astrologie: Fondements, Logique et Perspectives [= Astrology: Foundations, Logic and Perspectives], (Paris I Sorbonne, March 1993; director Françoise Bonardel, chair of jury Gilbert Durand). « Text

[47] In Le feu du dedans [= The Fire Within] (1984), French translation by Amal Naccache, Paris, Gallimard, 1988, p. 13. « Text

[48] Cf. Carl Jung, Synchronicité et paracelsica [=Synchronicity and Paracelsica], French translation published by Albin Michel, 1988, pp. 177-180, 217-222. « Text

[49] Plato deplores the fact that the philosophers of his time do not pay greater attention to the number of units which go to compose a given multiplicity: "The learned of today say 'one' at the drop of a hat, and 'several' too quickly or too slowly, passing immediately from the one to the infinite, whilst the intermediate [numbers] escape them." (in Oeuvres complètes: Philèbe, French translation by Léon Robin, Paris, Gallimard, 1950, vol. 2, p. 557-558). « Text