The Problem with Astrology
Astrology: The Manifesto
by Patrice Guinard (CURA, http://cura.free.fr 2000-2001)
(Reviewed by Shelley Jordan, Jan. 2002, Edition 16)
At this point in history - the beginning of the 21st century - when
astrology should be undergoing a thorough renovation and re-evaluation, it
is instead experiencing what seems in effect like an adolescent identity
crisis. After the promising astrological renaissance of the 20th century,
which gave us Dane Rudhyar’s luminous philosophy, Dr. Zipporah Dobyns’
stream-lined analysis and John Addey’s harmonic theory, the excitement of
astrology’s innovative trends appears to be diminishing. Slowly sinking in
the quagmire of its own linguistic rigor mortis and conceptual dead ends,
astrology’s creative growing tip seems stunted. Searching for a means of
respectable integration into contemporary culture, astrological literature
continually tends to adopt the rhetoric and camouflage of more socially and
economically acceptable disciplines, such as psychology, statistical
science, physics or any number of ‘honorable’ epistemologies.
Faced with astrology’s frequent and boring repetition of antiquated
doctrine, its shortage of creative thinking and its geriatric philosophical
anemia stemming, incredulously, from its utter inability to get past the
predestination and prediction issue, many practitioners have responded with
a dangerously reactionary reversal of direction. A popular trend has become
the mining of the sanctum of astrology’s past, a worthy project in itself,
but degraded by the ulterior and naive quest for the True and Lost
Techniques of the Ancients, those illusory Golden Age methods of legend
which are said to accurately predict the future. An alternative and equally
futile effort to salvage astrology has been the tendency to justify itself
with the language and concepts of scientism, which are, in fact, alien to
the true nature of astrology.
Another serious disability of astrology’s has been its age-old predilection
for dichotomizing all its principles into categories of "good-bad,"
"male-female," and "light-dark." The roots of this bankrupt tendency are
hopelessly tangled in astrology’s enmeshment with religion; this dualism has
clung like a tenacious barnacle to the underside of astrology’s subconscious
for millennia, dragging it through the mire with its illegitimate consort of
shame - fortune-telling.
Fortunately, Dr. Patrice Guinard has now stepped into the foreground of
astrological research with what may be some of the most revelatory
astrological writing of this current era. An addition to the list of
France’s impressive lineage of major innovators, in the succession of
Rudhyar and the Gauquelins, Guinard has developed his own vocabulary,
definitions and methodology for explaining and illuminating our
understanding of the astrological. He has formulated a new and visionary
model for a tired discipline dangerously in need of fresh ideas.
Fully responding to the above-mentioned problems in astrology and, in fact,
far more, Guinard’s Manifesto is a complex and revolutionary work, part of a
larger opus which includes his doctoral dissertation on astrology for the
Department of Philosophy at the Sorbonne. Vast and multi-natured in its
scope, the Manifesto is at once an eloquent and sound explanation of the
nature and function of the astrological phenomenon - philosophically,
psychologically and anthropologically - and simultaneously a vigorous
polemic against the calcified orthodoxies of both astrology and the cultural
mentalities which persecute it.
While calling attention to astrology’s recent advances, Guinard warns
against the exogenous one-dimensional approach taken by historians of
astrology who proceed as if there were one astrology, and the endogenous
damage done to astrology by the mass market production of sun sign columns
and fatuous pre-fabricated chart interpretation packages.
My own personal encounter with the Manifesto generated an initial response
of disbelief as I first read through the rich language of its authoritative
pages. Disbelief became joy when I realized that at last I had come across
some genuinely intelligent and seminal astrological writing - free, no less
- with no strings attached and nothing for sale - and available to anyone
who takes the time to read it on its website at CURA’s tri-lingual online
journal. I recommend that you print out its fourteen chapters - you will
want to read it more than once to fully absorb its breadth and implications.
The Astral Matrix and Matrix-Based Reason
Central to an understanding of Guinard’s Manifesto is the theory of
matrix-based thinking. Also called matricial reasoning, this model of
perception explains both the process by which astrological information is
received into the personal and collective consciousness from planetary
cycles as well as how the psyche ‘thinks astrologically.’ Matrix-based
thinking is to be distinguished from the quantitative and causal logic of
the empirical and scientistic world view, and the descriptive-interpretive
modality of history or linguistics. Matrix-based thinking is a global
process of coordinating psychic states, of experiencing relative "states of
being" in a living cosmos which is an organic reticulum of interconnected
multiplicities, which can be ordered by the psyche according to the innate,
symbolic archetypal themes which permeate and condition consciousness.
There exists on its own terms an organizing astral matrix, which "structures
psychic phenomena," unifying the planetary cycles of the geo-solar
environment with the personal psyche by means of trace impressions
(impressio), impregnations of evanescent imprints at the level of
preconsciousness. In other words, the planets’ activities within the
naturally occurring structural fabric of the zodiac resonate as transitory
interior states of consciousness. This is not a physical theory of
astrological influences, which he distinguishes as cosmobiology, but an
epistemological model of consciousness, unimpeded by dualism or quantitative
scientific pseudo-analysis.
"Matrix or psycho-synthetic structure (astrological)... reveals the
organization of potential reality... Impressionistic awareness
(impressionaux) are not psychic states, but rather "minimal" forms, of
archetypal nature, limited in number, which innervate those states."
(Chapter 4)
This is not the discovery of a causal model for astrology - let the
physicists worry about that, says Guinard. Astrology exists as its own
structural model and needs to further cultivate and develop its own
constructs. It is not an invention, but is a perceived and operational
system; it exists in nature and would continue to operate even if there were
no astrologers. The psyche is simply in resonance with the cyclical
planetary environment. Guinard’s structural approach perceives reality as a
continuum of generally organized "elements forming a totality" in an
interconnected web of relationships, which occur at the psychic level of
interiority as well as in the physical spheres.
Concerning the phasic nature of the cyclicality of planetary periods and
their impregnation of the psychic field, Guinard states:
"The cyclical structure is imprinted on the neural organization, which
reproduces the periodic variations of the planets. Neuro-psychological
integration of geo-solar rhythms translates itself into a continuous psychic
stimulus ? astral incidence ? and into a structuring of the nervous system
through pre-conscious mental states, which in turn give rise to
psycho-mental representations." (Chapter 5)
In other words, the psyche is activated with subtle astrological symbols at
the substratum of awareness, in resonance with the cyclicality of the
planets. Astrology’s object is one of structuring relationship between the
human psyche and the cosmic environs within it which it is situated.
Guinard lays out three primary postulations of astrology:
1. The existence of a primary, psychic interior world which perceives and
organizes information from the concrete, phenomenal world. The psychic
states of this qualified interiority are the conceptual substratum of
language and objects.
2. The interior world, called the psychic-astral by Guinard, is in a state
of constant activity - forever animated and energized by the continual
movements of the shifting planetary cycles. These planetary patterns create
"impressionals" in the psyche, which take the form of transient
infinitesimals of pre-conscious awareness infused into the subjective
interiority.
3. Inherent in the psyche are structuring capabilities - conditioning
milieux - which format the received astral information, organizing these
pre-conscious awarenesses by means of an innate, naturally occurring
quadripartite organizational process consisting of spatial houses, energetic
planetary forces, temporal cycles and aspects, and the structure of the zodiac.
Guinard distinguishes between astral influences and impressionals, the
fleeting pre-conscious awarenesses resulting from an astronomical signal.
The impressionals are experienced as open-ended symbols - archetypal forms
beyond reason which originate in the astral.
"The notion of the pre-conscious awareness liberates astrology from its
servitude to an exterior psychology, be it psychoanalytic, behaviorist,
phenomenological, gestaltist, existentialist or reflexologic. It is time for
astrology to forge its own concepts." (Chapter 1)
Astrology and Science
The Manifesto discusses astrology and its position in relation to the
prevailing scientistic orthodoxies of our day. Science, the new opiate of
the people, is the current substitute for Christian religion and morality,
and can be divided into three main categories, corresponding to the three
modalities in which information impresses itself in the field of personal
consciousness.
Reality can be perceived as an object - this perceptual mode generating the
material, empirical sciences, such as biochemistry. Reality can be received
as signs requiring interpretation; in this category falls the interpretive
social or humanistic sciences, historic and hermeneutic in nature. Reality
can, lastly, be received as impressions, states of being; to this category
belongs the psycho-synthetic science of astrology, which "perceives reality
in relation to the totality of psychic being."
Guinard continually emphasizes the global, non-dual and organic nature of
consciousness, and that astrology is a system which is involved, not with
events, but with states of consciousness, a position which liberates it from
the predictive, outcome-oriented tendencies which have metasticized to
nearly every facet of its practice. Prediction, which is considered by
traditional astrology to be the supreme and consummate skill, is called the
"siren’s song" of the astrologers by Guinard.
In discussing the "astrophobia" of the scientific community, the Manifesto
is thorough in its analysis and discussion of the common attacks against
astrology, which typically reveal the attacker’s "nullity" of knowledge and
comprehension of the subject. Guinard covers all the well-worn arguments of
precession, action at a distance, and the materialist argument which
complains about the "imaginary" factors of the signs, aspects and houses. In
his examination and refutation of the various forms that the
"anti-astrological polemic" has taken, Guinard is at all times candid,
passionate and convincing in his defense and exposition of astrology -
unique among disciplines in its endless victimization.
"Rare are those bodies of knowledge, such as astrology, which must
continually confront their detractors... In the context of modern society,
astrology is held in scant esteem; its principles are denied any validity;
its practices are ridiculed. It is called to account to justify itself
vis-a-vis a variety of institutionalized presuppositions, customs, beliefs
and skepticisms. There exists no universal manifesto against psychoanalysis,
Voodoo, historical materialism or the immaterialism of Berkeley. No
religious sect, doctrine or practice is so regularly vilified by the
pontifications of the intelligentsia, nor is its voice left so willfully
unheard by the skeptical deafness of those who claim to be the possessors of
knowledge." (Chapter 7)
Attacks against astrology are often aimed, blindly, at its "parody", the
mass market astrology of sun sign columns. Guinard goes on to suggest that
astrology may present such a threat to the intellectual world because it
might be a "true alternative to unidimensional thought."
The Manifesto as Astrological Literature
It is impossible for this reviewer to adequately cover the exhaustive
complexity and poetic fire of the Manifesto. It is an entirely new
astrological genre. One is left with the feeling that Guinard has allowed
few intellectual stones to remain unturned in his epic analysis of
astrology, its functional operatives and its role in society. The level of
sophistication and learning represented by the Manifesto’s discussion of
astrology’s most critical questions and dilemmas sets a new standard for
future astrological thinkers and researchers. This is high-brow astrology at
its finest, written in powerful academic yet imaginative language. For his
brilliant vision, definitions and defense of astrology, Patrice Guinard is
one of its most important and intelligent pioneers.
The Manifesto should be required reading for all serious students or
opponents of astrology. At the present time, the Manifesto is not in print.
It cannot be purchased or borrowed from a library. It is only available on
the CURA tri-lingual website.
To cite this page:
Shelley Jordan: De Docta Astrologia: C.U.R.A.'s Book Reviews
http://cura.free.fr/books2.html
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