Revolution

The word ‘revolution’ itself, so often heard in the 1960s and so central to that era’s spirit, first came into wide use in its present meaning of sudden radical change in the 1790s.

Tarnas argues that the very concept of revolution as sudden radical transformation entered currency during the French Revolutionary period, itself coinciding with a Uranus-Pluto opposition, establishing the archetypal template for all subsequent revolutionary eras.

Richard Tarnas, Prometheus the Awakener: An Essay on the Archetypal Meaning of the Planet Uranus, 1995thesis

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Only by correct revolution, conquering the ego and returning to propriety, getting rid of falsehood and maintaining truthfulness, burning away all the pollution of conditioning and bringing to light the true essence of the primal unified awareness

The Taoist I Ching defines authentic revolution as an interior psychological and spiritual work — the dissolution of ego and conditioning — rather than merely external political transformation.

Thomas Cleary, Liu Yiming, The Taoist I Ching, 1986thesis

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the hexagram Ching, THE WELL, which means a permanent setup, is followed by the hexagram of REVOLUTION, showing the need of changes in long-established institutions, in order to keep them from stagnating.

Wilhelm’s I Ching presents revolution as a cosmological necessity sequenced after permanence: institutions require periodic revolutionary renewal or they become moribund, just as a well must be cleaned.

Richard Wilhelm, Cary F. Baynes, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis

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the historical character of these coinciding periods corresponded exactly, even profoundly, to the archetypal meanings for those two planets according to the consensus of standard astrological texts

Tarnas presents his core thesis that the recurring character of revolutionary historical epochs corresponds precisely to the archetypal signatures of the Uranus-Pluto planetary cycle, constituting a coherent cosmological pattern.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006thesis

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young Friedrich Schelling declares that his philosophy aims ‘not merely at a reform of knowledge, but at a total reversal of its principles; that is to say, it aims at a revolution of knowledge.’

Abrams documents how Romantic thinkers transposed the idea of political revolution into an epistemological category, envisioning a total revolution in knowledge that would liberate humanity from subjection to the objective world.

M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, 1971thesis

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its spectacular synthesis of emancipatory innovation and mass violence. Here again, as in the 1960–72 period, we see the specifically destructive element of the Dionysus archetype, yet we see it always inextricably linked with Promethean themes of freedom and rebellion

Tarnas identifies the essential paradox of the revolutionary archetype: the Dionysian destructive force and Promethean liberation are inseparable within the same archetypal complex, explaining the concurrent emancipation and terror characteristic of major revolutions.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006thesis

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Readers of Cohen’s meticulous work will immediately note the extraordinarily consistent correlation of the major revolutionary epochs and events he recognizes as paradigmatic, in both the intellectual and political realms, with the cyclical sequence of Uranus-Pluto conjunctions and oppositions

Tarnas marshals historiographical evidence to demonstrate that both political and intellectual revolutions cluster systematically around Uranus-Pluto alignments, validating the archetypal-cyclical model of revolutionary history.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006thesis

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This eight-year period precisely coincided with the great wave of Latin American revolutions that brought independence in rapid succession to Argentina (1816), Chile (1817), Colombia (1819), Mexico, Venezuela

Tarnas substantiates his archetypal-cyclical thesis with the precise correlation of the Uranus-Pluto square of 1816–1824 with the wave of Latin American independence revolutions, forming a discernible bell-shaped curve of revolutionary activation.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting

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the tumultuous era of the French Revolution was virtually worldwide, with the just-cited evidence showing that the long revolutionary epoch then unfolded in exact correlation with the longer-term Uranus-Pluto alignment through most of the 1790s

Tarnas traces the precise temporal unfolding of the French Revolution’s key events against the exact degrees of the Uranus-Pluto alignment, arguing for a correlation too consistent to be coincidental.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting

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concerned with the outward, losing the inward, holding fast without flexibility, this is revolution that abandons the root and pursues the branches.

Liu I-ming distinguishes pseudo-revolution — externally focused change that loses inner grounding — from authentic revolution, which requires flexibility and attentiveness to the inward root.

Liu I-ming, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting

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The varied manifestations of this spirit of drastic change can be viewed as ‘sure heralds of one of the grandest and most beneficial revolutions which has ever come to pass, alike in the intellectual and in the moral world.’

Abrams shows how Reinhold and the German Idealists read simultaneous political and philosophical upheavals as expressions of a single revolutionary spirit encompassing both the moral and intellectual orders.

M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, 1971supporting

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The Revolution’s systematic attempt to dechristianize French society and establish a new religion of Reason and Humanity continued for over three years until religious freedom was instituted in 1797

Tarnas illustrates the totalizing religious dimension of the French Revolution under the Uranus-Pluto opposition, demonstrating how the revolutionary impulse extended beyond politics into the domain of sacred order and cosmological authority.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting

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so great an intellectual revolution that it is difficult for us to conceive how men thought before it was made

Tarnas traces the intellectual revolution of religious toleration and rational political discourse that directly anticipated and seeded the institutional revolutions of the subsequent Uranus-Pluto cycle.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting

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the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction immediately prior to that of the Bastille rebellion and the mutiny on the Bounty took place in 1775–76, during the very months that began the American Revolution

Tarnas demonstrates that successive Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions correlated with the sequential beginnings of the American and French revolutions, reinforcing the cyclical-archetypal account of revolutionary emergence.

Richard Tarnas, Prometheus the Awakener: An Essay on the Archetypal Meaning of the Planet Uranus, 1995supporting

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People are deadly bored and think how nice it would be if they could go back into the chaos of revolution, where at least life flowed. You see more and more how nations switch between those two poles, just as individuals do.

Von Franz identifies a psychic oscillation — at both collective and individual levels — between the vitality of revolutionary chaos and the deadening order of institutional restoration, framing revolution as a psychological pole rather than a discrete event.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus, 1970supporting

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it was the first of the great movements of modern times in which large masses of men consciously took part — the French Revolution with all the consequent convulsions which spread from it over Europe.

Auerbach argues that the French Revolution inaugurated a new relationship between mass consciousness and historical event, creating the social-psychological conditions for modern tragic realism.

Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953supporting

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The French Revolution and the American Revolution are two of the most important and enduring legacies of the Enlightenment.

McGilchrist situates the two landmark political revolutions as culminating expressions of Enlightenment left-hemispheric rationalism, connecting revolutionary ideology to the deeper neurological and philosophical tendencies of Western modernity.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting

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Both were periods of extraordinarily rapid change, and each era was notable in its own way for the widespread destabilization of previously established structures, accelerated creativity, and a radically heightened impulse towards emancipation and experiment.

Tarnas identifies the common archetypal signature — accelerated destabilization, creative eruption, emancipatory impulse — shared across revolutionary periods associated with the Uranus principle, distinguishing this common element from the variable character introduced by the second planet in the alignment.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006supporting

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a man must be in an honored place in order to have the authority to bring about a revolution. One who is central and correct is able to bring out all the good of such a revolution.

Wilhelm’s commentary on Hexagram 49 establishes that revolution requires not only readiness but legitimate authority and moral centrality in its initiator, otherwise it cannot issue in genuine good.

Wilhelm, Richard, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950aside

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the rapid development and global proliferation of the telegraph, railroads, and steamships during the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the 1845–56 period

Tarnas extends the revolutionary archetype into the technological domain, showing how Uranus-Pluto alignments coincide not only with political upheaval but with the revolutionary transformation of material civilization.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006aside

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when the shorter-period alignments of the Saturn-Pluto cycle coincided with longer-period alignments of the Uranus-Pluto cycle, complicated archetypal tensions were strongly in evidence

Tarnas refines his model by showing that when the Saturn-Pluto cycle overlaps with the Uranus-Pluto cycle during revolutionary periods, the emancipatory and constrictive archetypes enter into a productive but fraught tension, intensifying the violence and repression that accompany revolutionary epochs.

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006aside

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