My interest in depth-psychology began in the Spring, 1932,
when I was given a copy of
The Secret of the Golden Flower,
a treatise on
Chinese esoteric doctrines with a commentary by Richard Wilhelm and
Carl Jung. I
was deeply impressed and soon after, I wrote a circular entitled
Harmonic
Psychology(1) marking the beginning of my work in astro-psychology, or as I
called it much later, Humanistic Astrology. I had been studying astrology since
1920 and had begun to take a more philosophical and creative approach to it
after reading some of Mark Edmund Jones' early mimeographed courses. At
about the same time, I became enthused by the work of Jan Smuts,
Holism and
Evolution,
which provided me with a central concept which at the
time was entirely new
— the concept of holism.
In
1933, I had the opportunity to read three of the four books of Jung that
had been translated into English, and I became further convinced of the
possibility of integrating astrology and depth-psychology.
In
that year, the first magazine promoting a popular solar type of astrology,
American Astrology,
was launched by Paul Clancy who, on hearing of my idea, offered
to publish anything I would write in a monthly section that would be devoted to
Psychological Astrology.
When
Grant Lewi became editor of Horoscope
magazine, he asked me to write
articles as well. After Clancy declined to renew the exclusive clause in our
agreement, I began to write two articles monthly for
Horoscope,
one of a
shorter and more inspirational character; and this went on for many years.
In
1942 in New York, I met the associate editor of a now long discontinued
magazine, World Astrology.
She was eager to have articles from me and for
several years I also wrote two articles monthly for that magazine. One series,
printed under the pen name Daniel Morison, dealt with personalities and events
of the day. In the other series, under my own name, I sought to popularize the
ideas of some of the leaders in depth-psychology with whose works I was well
acquainted, and to show how the basic psychological doctrines these men were
promoting could be related to the character of their birth-charts.
Much
of this original circular has been reprinted in the Epilogue of my book,
The
Astrology of Personality.
It is this second series on depth-psychology and astrology
which forms the larger part of this present volume. In the last section, several
articles published in Horoscope
after World War II have been added, as
they refer to significant and related psychological issues. All these articles
have been carefully edited and revised under my supervision by my friend and
assistant, Leyla Rael, whose mind warmly resonates to the ideas and the
world-view I have tried to promote during so many years. I am extremely grateful
to her for her efficient collaboration. My thanks go also to Stephen Arroyo of
CRCS Publications, whose idea it was initially to gather this material in an
up-dated form. I might add here that the charts in this book have been
recalculated with Campanus houses, as this is the house system which I have used
during the last years, for reasons explained in the
first part of my
book,
The Astrological Houses: The Spectrum of Individual Experience
(Doubleday,
N. Y., 1973).
As
it now stands, the material contained in this volume presents, I believe, many
valuable and perhaps novel vistas to both the open-minded person interested in
psychology and the astrological student eager to gain a more complete
understanding of the various aspects of a complex subject which has come to
dominate so much of our contemporary lives. I hope and trust that it will help
to bring deeper psychological insights to many people now attracted to the
fascinating field of astrology, and as well, to suggest in a more precise and
formalized manner to students of psychology the importance of studying the basic
aspects of the personality of a psychologist if one is to fully understand the
essential character and quality of his or her teachings.
Palo
Alto, California
April, 1976
