Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View

by Richard Tarnas

Overview

A groundbreaking book that explores how astrology can inform our understanding of the events that have shaped our world—the inspiration for the docuseries Changing of the Gods.

In these pages, distinguished philosopher and cultural historian Richard Tarnas traces the connection between cosmic cycles and archetypal patterns of human experience. Based on thirty years of meticulous research, and on thinkers from Plato to Jung, Cosmos and Psyche explores the planetary correlations of epochal events like the French Revolution, the two world wars, and September 11.

This brilliant book points to a radical change in our understanding of the cosmos, shining new light on the drama of history and on our own critical age. It opens up a new cosmic horizon that reunites science and religion, intellect and soul, modern reason and ancient wisdom. Whether read as astrology updated for the quantum age or as a contemporary classic of spirituality, Cosmos and Psyche is a work of immense sophistication, deep learning, and lasting importance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780452288591
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/24/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	592
Product dimensions:	6.11(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.28(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Richard Tarnas is the founding director of the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he currently teaches. Born in 1950 in Geneva, Switzerland, of American parents, he grew up in Michigan, where he received a classical Jesuit education. In 1968 he entered Harvard, where he studied Western intellectual and cultural history and depth psychology, graduating with an A.B. cum laude in 1972. For ten years he lived and worked at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, studying with Stanislav Grof, Joseph Campbell, Gregory Bateson, Huston Smith, and James Hillman, later serving as Esalen’s director of programs and education. He received his Ph.D. from Saybrook Institute in 1976 with a dissertation on LSD psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and spiritual transformation. From 1980 to 1990, he wrote The Passion of the Western Mind, a narrative history of Western thought from the ancient Greek to the postmodern which became a bestseller and continues to be a widely used text in universities throughout the world.  In 2006, he published Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, which received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network in the UK. Formerly president of the International Transpersonal Association, he is on the Board of Governors of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.  In addition to his teaching at CIIS, he has been a frequent lecturer at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, and gives many public lectures and seminars in the U.S. and abroad.

Table of Contents

Preface     xiii
The Transformation of the Cosmos     1
The Birth of the Modern Self     3
The Dawn of a New Universe     5
Two Paradigms of History     11
Forging the Self, Disenchanting the World     16
The Cosmological Situation Today     26
In Search of a Deeper Order     37
Two Suitors: A Parable     39
The Interior Quest     43
Synchronicity and Its Implications     50
The Archetypal Cosmos     61
Through the Archetypal Telescope     71
The Evolving Tradition     73
Archetypal Principles     80
The Planets     88
Forms of Correspondence     102
Personal Transit Cycles     109
Archetypal Coherence and Concrete Diversity     126
Assessing Patterns of Correlation     135
Epochs of Revolution     139
From the French Revolution to the 1960s     141
Synchronic and Diachronic Patterns in History     149
Scientific and Technological Revolutions     159
Awakenings of the Dionysian     166
The Liberation of Nature     172
Religious Rebellion and Erotic Emancipation     183
Filling in the Cyclical Sequence     188
The Individual and the Collective     194
A Larger View of the Sixties     202
Cycles of Crisis and Contraction     207
World Wars, Cold War, and September 11     209
Historical Contrasts and Tensions     219
Conservative Empowerment     226
Splitting, Evil, and Terror     234
Moby Dick and Nature's Depths     239
Historical Determinism, Realpolitik, and Apocalypse     242
Moral Courage, Facing the Shadow, and the Tension of Opposites     257
Paradigmatic Works of Art     268
Forging Deep Structures     285
Cycles of Creativity and Expansion     289
Opening New Horizons     291
Convergences of Scientific Breakthroughs     296
Social and Political Rebellions and Awakenings     300
Quantum Leaps and Peak Experiences     307
From Copernicus to Darwin     312
Music and Literature     317
Iconic Moments and Cultural Milestones     326
Great Heights and Shadows     335
Hidden Births     349
Awakenings of Spirit and Soul     353
Epochal Shifts of Cultural Vision      355
Spiritual Epiphanies and the Emergence of New Religions     366
Utopian Social Visions     375
Romanticism, Imaginative Genius, and Cosmic Epiphany     380
Revelations of the Numinous     401
The Great Awakening of the Axial Age     409
The Late Twentieth Century and the Turn of the Millennium     419
Towards a New Heaven and a New Earth     453
Understanding the Past, Creating the Future     455
Observations on Future Planetary Alignments     465
Opening to the Cosmos     484
Sources of the World Order     488
Epilogue     491
Notes     494
Sources     535
Acknowledgments     545
Index     549

What People are Saying About This

author of Between Two Ages: The 21st Century a William Van Dusen Wishard

Majestic, sweeping, and profound... This will be a book for the ages. (William Van Dusen Wishard, author of Between Two Ages: The 21st Century and the Crisis of Meaning)

professor of philosophy and religious studies Youngstown State Un Christopher Bache

Breathtaking in the scope and scale of its vision, this extraordinary book shatters our cosmological assumptions ... Spellbinding, eloquent, compelling. (Christopher Bache, professor of philosophy and religious studies, Youngstown State University)

From the Publisher

Breathtaking in the scope and scale of its vision, this extraordinary book shatters our cosmological assumptions . . . Spellbinding, eloquent, compelling. (Christopher Bache, professor of philosophy and religious studies, Youngstown State University)

Majestic, sweeping, and profoundà This will be a book for the ages. (William Van Dusen Wishard, author of Between Two Ages: The 21st Century and the Crisis of Meaning)

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Cosmos and Psyche

“Breathtaking in the scope and scale of its vision, this extraordinary book shatters our cosmological assumptions...Spellbinding, eloquent, compelling.”—Christopher Bache, professor of philosophy and religious studies, Youngstown State University

“Majestic, sweeping, and profound. This will be a book for the ages.”—William Van Dusen Wishard, author of Between Two Ages: The 21st Century and the Crisis of Meaning

“This is the closest my head has been to exploding while reading a book.”—Mary Hynes, CBC Tapestry

“What more important message could there be for our time? If you want to understand more deeply the currents which have shaped and are shaping our world, then this passionate, brilliant, and luminous book is essential reading.”—David Lorimer, Scientific and Medical Network Review

“Cosmos and Psyche is an epoch-making work. It combines impeccably meticulous scholarship and extraordinary clarity of thinking and writing with deep creative vision. The evidence contained here represents the most significant challenge I have seen to the materialistic paradigm of modern science.”—Stanislav Grof, author of Psychology of the Future

From the Publisher

Thirty years in the making, Richard Tarnas's Cosmos and Psyche defies easy categorization. In this major work, Tarnas, a Harvard-educated historian and professor of philosophy and psychology, proposes a consistent correspondence between planetary cycles and the unfolding of history. With fascinating evidence that would brighten the day of any cosmologist, he argues that our present era is most comparable to the tumultuous, creative epoch of the High Renaissance.

According to Tarnas, acclaimed author of The Passion of the Western Mind, history is on the verge of a major shift, comparable to the one wrought by Copernicus and Galileo, but a seemingly antiscientific one: an astrological turn that can only be understood thorough chronicling planetary alignments as they correlate to the rise of the modern mind over the last 500 years. Understanding planetary alignments, for Tarnas, is crucial to the world's future and requires "a genuine dialogue" with the cosmos, by "opening ourselves more fully" to "the other," to ancient and indigenous epistemologies, even "to other forms of life, other modes of the universe's self-disclosure." Filled with philosophical, religious, literary and scientific thinking ranging from Luther and Kepler through Hemingway and even Hitchcock and Dylan, Tarnas's book is not only sweeping in subject but dense and sometimes painfully slow going. It requires at once a strong background in the history of modern thought, an advanced knowledge of astrology, a willingness to withhold skepticism about the role of planetary alignments of the past in understanding life today and the avoidance of imminent world catastrophe. Tarnas's call to redefine what we consider as "legitimate knowledge" will resonate in some sectors, but it will be a tough sell with the more scientifically hardheaded. (Jan. 23) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In this sequel to The Passion of the Western Mind, Tarnas (philosophy, cosmology, & consciousness, California Inst. of Integral Studies) opens with an overview of the "modern self," paying special attention to the impact of the Copernican revolution. He then begins a discussion of the psychological aspects of this modern self, building up to Carl Jung's analysis of the phenomenon of synchronicity. This discussion serves as the springboard for the rest of the book: cosmological archetypes and the principles of astrology. Tarnas cites an abundance of examples drawn from historical individuals, cultural eras, political events and revolutions, scientific discoveries, literary developments, and artistic innovations that correspond to various planetary alignments. He persuasively argues that a logical shift on the order of the Copernican revolution is necessary in order for modern individuals to analyze better the past and present (and to some extent the future). At times, however, the material seems to do little more than summarize planetary alignments and corresponding events. If nothing else, Tarnas succeeds in pointing out overwhelming coincidences that will undoubtedly be difficult for readers to disregard. Recommended for medium and large collections.-Jason Moore, Madison Cty. Lib. Syst., MS Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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