THE ASTROLOGY OF CREATION (PART II)

 I recently wrote a piece in which I generated some astrology around the 2 main modern Creation Myths: the Big Bang and Evolution. But then I realised that Evolution is not truly a Creation Myth. It tells us how human beings came about, but not how life itself came about. For that we have no story, for we have no idea beyond improbably complex and unknown events in the primeval soup. This is remarkable. What culture apart from us has not had a story about how life came about? We do not know where we came from, and as such are truly impoverished. I do not wish however, to damn modern culture. We have a lot going for us.

As ever, Astrology can provide a story where Science cannot. Astrology is bigger than Science, for it uses all 4 elements of Fire, Earth, Air and Water to describe the universe, as opposed to Science's limited emphasis on just Air and Earth (theory and data.) Science is the younger brother of Astrology, and needs to defer to it if it is not to get out of balance.

In my previous post, I talked about the Big Bang from the point of view of the year it was theorised (1931). Before that, I also wrote about it as the combined action of Uranus (the creative spark, the blue touchpaper), Neptune (the primordial imagination that dreamed a universe into being) and Pluto (the tremendous power contained in that tiny singularity that keeps the universe unfolding even now.)

By the same reasoning, we can create an astrological mythology around the beginning of life. What are these stories other than mythologies? The universe is dreamed into being - it is, if you like, an artefact of the brain - there is in reality no special realm called 'fact' that Science likes to pride itself upon.

The Universe was dreamed into being by gods - Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. And so was Life itself, but with consciousness, the inner dimension of matter, having more primacy. Uranus was the spark when, as it were, God reached out and matter awakened. It then dreamed forms for itself - Neptune - with an irrepressible drive to live and keep unfolding (Pluto).

With this kind of mythology behind life, how can we possibly reduce its continual unfoldment to the brutal and reductionist 'survival of the fittest'? Ruthless Pluto might not blanche at such a mechanism, but Neptune, with his feeling for beauty, would certainly have something to say. As would creative Uranus, offended by his reduction to blind chance.

I had a dream some years ago in which I was shown a peppered moth, perfectly adapted to his surroundings (the classic example used in biology lessons.) But I was also told that the mechanism we are given for evolution only describes a very thin slice of how this moth came to be this way.

My criterion is, in a way, aesthetic. The true is the beautiful, and vice-versa, as Keats declaimed, and to which pure mathematicians would readily assent. There is nothing beautiful about 'survival of the fittest'. It is brutal, and reflects the Victorian capitalism of its time. It also reflects the one-sided mythology of 'nature red in tooth and claw' (Tennyson), but leaves out the Rousseau-ian mythology of benign, pristine nature (which can itself be one-sided, if we look at modern environmentalism and its revulsion at human impact upon the natural world.)

There is no way that the very slow and haphazard micro-changes of 'survival of the fittest' is adequate, even scientifically, as a description of the ongoing unfoldment of life and the rapid flowering of new species. We accept it because it 'has' to be that way. How about the idea that life unfolds according to the beautiful (Neptune) and the co-operative (Uranus)? And where does that irrepressible impulse to survive come from if not Pluto?

So let us have another look at the chart for the publication of On the Origin of Species (time of day unkown) from the point of view of the origin of life itself.

Sun in Sagittarius, which is perfect for a Creation Myth. Sun opposite Uranus: there is the divine spark in the primeval soup that started life. Sun trine Neptune and Jupiter: the dreaming (Neptune) that creates a multitude (Jupiter) of species. And then there is Pluto, unaspected. The power is missing. In other words the mechanism of 'survival of the fittest', which is very Plutonian and central to Darwin's thesis, does not provide the power to move life forward. QED 😆

It is archetypal forces from deep within consciousness that created, and continue to create, life. Matter and consciousness cannot be separated. Previous cultures understood this. As I said earlier, I don't want to damn modern culture, that is too easy and we have a lot going for us. But in our technological triumph we have lost our archetypal bearings. Astrology, through which the universe continues to remind us of who we are, speaks the language that we have lost. I think it is a language that speaks to everyone, for what is more basic and ancient than our relationship with the sky?

 

Meanwhile let us have faith, that even in the midst of the huge transition that humanity is undergoing, with its extinctions and environmental degradations, that the outer planets have their bigger schemes: the renewals of Pluto, the re-dreamings of Neptunes, and the new opportunities of Uranus.