Planets and Archetypes 14

6. The ancient Greek root for the word planet ”planetes ”meant wanderer, and signified not only Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn but also the Sun and Moon ”i.e., all the visible celestial bodies that, unlike the fixed stars, moved through the sky in ways that differed from the simple single motion and eternal regularity of the diurnal westward movement of the entire heavens. Though sometimes a distinction is made between planets and luminaries, the astrological tradition has generally retained this original meaning, referring to the Sun and Moon as planets. One finds this usage in the European literary tradition as well, as in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida : Therefore is the glorious planet Sol / In noble eminence enthroned and sphered.

7. See A. E. Taylor's translation of Plato's Philebus and Epinomis , with an introduction by R. Klibansky (London: Thomas Nelson, 1956).

8. I first discussed the issue of Uranus's archetypal meaning in a monograph entitled Prometheus the Awakener, written in 1978-79 and privately distributed among colleagues. A preliminary analysis intended mainly for the Jungian, archetypal psychology, and astrological communities, it was later published in the National Council of Geocosmic Research Monographs (1981) and, in slightly expanded form under the title Uranus and Prometheus, in the Spring Journal of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought (1983). Both versions were published in several other astrological journals in Europe and the United States during the following decade. The monograph was later published as a small book in an expanded version as Prometheus the Awakener, first in England (Oxford: Auriel Press, 1993) and subsequently in the U.S. (Woodstock, Conn.: Spring Publications, 1995). Other discussions of the parallels between the astrological Uranus and the mythological Prometheus can be found in Stephen Arroyo, Astrology, Karma, and Transformation (1978), p. 40, the earliest mention of the correspondence of which I am aware; and in Liz Greene, The Art of Stealing Fire (London: CPA Press, 1996), a more recent, longer treatment which draws, in part, on my monograph.

9. William James, Human Immortality (1898): In cases of conversion, in providential leadings, sudden mental healing's, etc., it seems to the subjects themselves of the experience as if a power from without, quite different from the ordinary action of the senses or of the sense-led mind, came into their life, as if the latter suddenly opened into that greater life in which it has its source. The word ˜influx,' used in Swedenborgian circles, well describes this impression of new insight, or new willingness, sweeping over us like a tide. . . . We need only suppose the continuity of our consciousness with a mother sea, to allow for exceptional waves occasionally pouring over the dam.

10. Both Heraclitus and Euripides identified Dionysus and Hades as one and the same deity, an identification that parallels modern astrological observations of archetypal phenomena associated with the planet Pluto.

Copyright 2004 by Richard Tarnas