Planetary Gods as Archetypal Complexes

In archetypal astrology the seven classical planets and the three outer planets are not bodies but gods — the archetypal persons of the psyche, named under their astronomical titles. Saturn is Kronos, father-and-devourer, lord of melancholy, structure, limit. Mercury is Hermes, trickster, guide, winged messenger. Mars is Ares, emotion and warlikeness. Venus is Aphrodite. Jupiter is Zeus. The outer three — Uranus, Neptune, Pluto — mark the transpersonal threshold: the point at which the personal chart opens onto the collective-unconscious.

james-hillman reads this polytheistically. “Astrology provides the best descriptions of character qualities. More than any other field, astrology gives background for the psychology of personality when personality is conceived as a collection of stable traits” (Hillman 1967, Senex and Puer). The planets are the figures the psyche has always been made of. Hillman turns the move into an etymology: “Congenital means synchronous with birth, that is, astrological” (Hillman 1967).

liz-greene gives the outer planets their psychological reading: when Saturn in one chart is contacted by Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto in another, he “swings about to confront what he feels to be an abyss opening behind him,” the built structure of personal identity meeting the force of the suprapersonal (Greene 1976).

The doctrine is classical in root. plato‘s Timaeus places the planets in the circles of the World-Soul, their revolutions the image of intelligible order (Timaeus 37D). What depth psychology adds is the inward translation: those circles are the structures of the psyche.

Relationships

Primary sources

hillman-senex-and-puer (Hillman 1967)
greene-saturn-new-look (Greene 1976)
plato-timaeus (Plato)