Why astrological research?

A motivation

In talking about doing astrological research, the range of responses is interesting, and these range from obvious skepticism to genuine interest. In this post, I offer some deep motivations for doing this work and why I believe it is important. These latter considerations are quite far reaching, and extend beyond what some of the traditional associations of astrology may suggest.

The skeptical rejection of astrology has to be a given in this. Astrological research is about testing, and the testability, of astrological claims. The aim of this post is not to defend it, but to consider its implications, when it is admitted as a serious area of study. And this is key. Astrology, perhaps more than any other area of human knowledge, has been marginalised in Western modernity. It is of significance in Jung’s work, but not an overt dimension of this in the way that the alchemical tradition is. Astrological knowledge endures through astrology as a practice, but is not accommodated in Western knowledge structures. Two points are noteworthy here. Firstly, astrology has been a fundamental part of human knowledge in all cultures since the dawn of history. Secondly, there are other controversial areas that are nonetheless far more accommodated. For example, there is extensive research in ‘psi’ or parapsychological phenomena - telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition - as explored particularly in the work of Dean Radin. While subject to intense criticism, extant research here far exceeds that around astrology.

The nature of consciousness is a fundamental question of philosophy and science, and this includes the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness - the nature of subjective experience, as opposed to its neurobiological correlates. Now ‘psi’ phenomena may be putatively seen as possible abilities of consciousness, and Radin remarks that as such they seem to be real but slight (although perhaps stronger in some cases). Astrology needs to be framed somewhat differently. On its own terms, it represents something more like a correlation of physical and psychological reality. The role of consciousness in this is itself a deep question, but one might say that astrological influence occurs anyway, and consciousness of this influence is possible. Thus it is something we can work with, but also something that can ‘work with us’. But phrased thus, this is just as true of unconscious contents and processes, in the conscious-unconscious relationship.

One way to frame astrology is thus synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence (as identified by Jung). A correspondence planetary configuration and an individual or collective human state may be seen as this, and the meaningfulness of the coincidence is exactly that the meaning attributed in human culture to the planets is apparently manifested. Likewise, awareness of a loved one who is in danger or has died, including the circumstances of this, is also exactly a meaningful coincidence. Synchronicity provides a ground for the mysterious correlation of physical and psychological circumstances, with the nature of consciousness remaining an open question in this.

One of the challenges of testing the phenomena mentioned above is their elusive nature. They are subtle, ‘low-level’ and spontaneous. People apparently have such experiences but they are often experiences that happen to people, and often in emotionally intense circumstances. Trying to recreate them in repeatable test conditions produces the slightly (though significantly) above chance effects that Radin reports, but these test conditions are hardly the true nature of the phenomena. Rather, they are spontaneous, meaningful occasions of experience that many, many people acknowledge. Astrology, on the other hand, is exactly repeatable synchronicity: the conditions of the synchronicity are cyclic.

Thus astrology holds a unique position of directly relating quality of experience and meaning to physical quantity. This is a key emphasis. In the sense that the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness is the nature of subjective experience, we could say that there are many ways in which physical situations (and thus physical quantity) influence it. There is an evident interface of somatic and neuro-biological dimensions with conscious experience, as well as wider socio-ecological ones. But this in a sense is the hard problem of consciousness - how do physical dimensions relate to conscious experience? Is it emergent, or somehow inherent? There are many possibilities here. Whatever it is or however it arises though, conscious experience exactly has this question of the relationship of the quality of experience to physical dimensions understood in terms of quantity. Astrology potentially reframes this as these physical dimensions themselves (somehow) imparted with quality and meaning.

This leads quite convincingly to an understanding of the marginalisation of astrology. In the Kantian synthesis, which philosophically defines Western modernity, the reality of experience is interiorised. Indeed this had been compared to the Copernican shift to the heliocentric perspective, in that rather than experience moving the ‘experiencer moves’ (through their categories of understanding).

It also leads, in a contrasting way, to the fundamental acknowledgement that most human understanding has seen reality has imparted with quality and meaning. Astrology is marginalised in modernity, but its basic recognition is an expression of a much deeper recognition, that has deeply characterised human understanding, in its deep history. In historical times, it is only Western modernity where astrology has not been a tradition of major importance, with a significant role in worldly affairs, in contrast to its large confinement to inner work today.

Of interest here are the various efforts to understand consciousness in terms of quantum theory. Here there is a situation where the concepts of quantum theory can, in various ways, provide a possible basis to understand consciousness, particularly in the wider sense of this suggested here, including the phenomena mentioned above. What I find notable about these inferences is that they are often compelling conceptual parallels, that do not necessarily amount to a deepened understanding of conscious experience. (There is a lot in such remarks, and they merit another article.) Astrological understanding is however a detailed suggestion of the relationality of conscious experience and wider reality.

None of this is intended to make a claim about the validity of astrological understanding as such. Rather, it is making an observation of the unique situation of the understanding it represents. On the one hand it is (in the West) one of the most marginalized of human understandings, and yet it offers a fundamental way to explore the relationship between consciousness and reality, or the psychological and physical. The meaningful relationship between inner and outer worlds is how most human cultures have understood the world, and from the point of view of modern consciousness research it provides a way to explore the suggestion of synchronicity as a spontaneous occurrence.

The emphasis on synchronicity above does not preclude thinking about astrological influence in terms of physical processes. This is possible, and variously attempted, and such an effort must reckon with the nature of the influence on consciousness and thus consciousness, and thus exploration of reality and consciousness also.

Astrological research potentially draws together physics, biology, psychology, consciousness, linguistics, history and art. Arguably the most marginalised area of knowledge is the most interdisciplinary. No assumption about astrology is required; its claims can be tested, explored and elaborated. It would be true to say there is little evidence for astrology, because there is so little research. Such research, the demarginalization of astrology as it were, has the possibility of creating an epistemic space in which the nature and relationship of quantity, quality, meaning, consciousness and reality are genuine questions. There are real opportunities to explore this, not at a level of conceptual possibility but at a level of the careful exploration of the workings of the universe, which is science in its best sense.