The book that I co-wrote with Polly Dukes, Signs of Life: The Origin of Astrological Symbolism and Its Relation to the Human Psyche, has now been published by Symbolistica and is available at Amazon and selected booksellers, both in paperback and hardcover formats.
We believe that we have established the origin of the signs of the zodiac, their astrological symbolism, and that of the planets, from a cognitive psychological point of view.
It is our contention that humanity’s most fundamental urges, functions and ways of behaving—archetypes of the human condition—were psychologically projected, over millennia in the collective unconscious, into the repeating seasons of the year, and onto the celestial bodies in the heavens.
The symbolism of this projection has informed the basis of much of humanity’s folklore, custom, myth and religion. It has been so developed and consolidated over the ages as to reflect and accommodate what we now understand as psychological constructs of personality, metaphors of development, models of motivational needs, and a shared articulation of life and spirit.
While we see the symbolism of astrology to be an extraordinarily revealing representation of the archetypes of human nature, we nevertheless realise that our argument and our review of the evidence is likely to alienate traditional practitioners of ‘divinatory’ astrology, which is predicated on the assumption that the geocentric positions of celestial bodies at birth can predict personality.
We are also aware that even those who are interested in the psychology of symbolism from an academic or scholarly point of view, as we are, may also be alienated, as they may not wish even to be associated with the ‘pseudoscience’ of astrology, however rational or scientific the survey.
We nevertheless stand by our analysis, and we would appeal to both camps—to traditional astrologers and to academic scholars and researchers alike—to confront our argument. We believe that both will find it revealing.
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