Carl Jung letter on Astrology
C.G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950
To L. Oswald
Dear Colleague, 8 December 1928
.
Please do not consider it a presumption on your part to interrogate me.
On the contrary, I am glad you found my lecture interesting.
I have experienced nothing of the kind in Switzerland yet.
You are quite right in supposing that I reckon astrology among those movements which, like theosophy, etc., seek to assuage an irrational thirst for knowledge but actually lead it into a sidetrack.
Astrology is knocking at the gates of our universities: a Tibingen professor has switched over to astrology and a course on astrology was given at Cardiff University last year.
Astrology is not mere superstition but contains some psychological facts (like theosophy) which are of considerable importance.
Astrology has actually nothing to do with the Stars but is the 5000 year old psychology of antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Unfortunately I cannot explain or prove this to you a letter.
You are also quite right in your view that people who subscribe all out to any of these movements exclude authentic experience for the sake of believed hypotheses, not knowing that they are mere hypotheses but believing them to be knowledge.
But in all these dubious fields there is at least something that is worth knowing and that our present-day rationalism has cast aside rather too hastily.
This something is projected psychology.
Always gladly at your service,
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 56.
Carl Jung on Astrology and the Birth of Christ
[Carl Jung on Astrology and the Birth of Christ]
I have dwelt at some length on the dualistic aspects of the Christ-figure because, through the fish symbolism, Christ was assimilated into a world of ideas that seems far removed from the gospels a world of pagan origin, saturated with astrological beliefs to an extent that we can scarcely imagine today.
Christ was born at the beginning of the aeon of the Fishes. It is by no means ruled out that there were educated Christians who knew of the coniunctio maxima of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces in the year 7 B.C., just as, according to the gospel reports, there were Chaldaeans who actually found Christ’s birthplace. The Fishes, however, are a double sign.
At midnight on Christmas Eve, when (according to the old time-reckoning) the sun enters Capricorn, Virgo is standing on the eastern horizon, and is soon followed by the Serpent held by Ophiuchus, the “Serpent-bearer.” This astrological coincidence seems to me worth mentioning, as also the view that the two fishes are mother and son.
The latter idea has a quite special significance because this relationship suggests that the two fishes were originally one. In fact, Babylonian and Indian astrology know of only one fish.
Later, this mother evidently gave birth to a son, who was a fish like her. The same thing happened to the Phoenician Derceto-Atargatis, who, half fish herself, had a son called Ichthys.
It is just possible that “the sign of the prophet Jonah” goes back to an older tradition about an heroic night sea journey and conquest of death, where the hero is swallowed by a fish (“whale-dragon”) and is then reborn.
The redemptory name Joshua (Yehoshua, Yeshua, Gr. lesous) is connected with the fish: Joshua is the son of Nun, and Nun means ‘fish.’
The Joshua ben Nun of the Khidr legend had dealings with a fish that was meant to be eaten but was revived by a drop of water from the fountain of life. ~Carl Jung, Aion, The Historical Significance of the Fish, Paragraphs 172-173.
