Intuitive-Archetypal Astrology

“Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche.”
-C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

I have been working as a professional intuitive and astrologer for over ten years now. And since that time, I have developed a new emerging paradigm that I like to call ‘intuitive-archetypal astrology’. It’s a long name, I know! But I feel it’s quite important that I differentiate the work I do from the stereotypes that flourish in our culture regarding what intuition and astrology are. To be sure, from the time I stepped into the intuitive arts, I have had many conversations in which common myths about what intuition and astrology are materialize. It seems to me that few really understand the real way intuition operates, and the archetypal science of astrology; not to mention its immeasurable value as a tool of self-discovery. Astrological guidance, properly understood, is of immense value on the path to greater consciousness, self-actualization, and alignment to your life’s purpose. Let’s investigate archetypes, astrology, and intuition—and then combine them all together. By the time I’m done, I hope you’ll see what I mean!

Archetypes

First of all, what are archetypes? Archetypes come to us out of the philosophy and intuition of Plato who taught that that which we perceive in our mundane, earthly life is issued from something that exists as a perfect and absolute idea on the energetic plane.

Plato felt that the cosmos was essentially an ordered, outer expression of certain primary essences that he called Forms. These Forms, he said, could only be known through intuitive perception because they didn’t belong to the mundane world. Rather, they patterned and created it.

An example of one of these forms is Beauty. How do we know something is beautiful? In Plato’s terms, we know something is beautiful because we intuitively sense the Ideal Form of Beauty imbuing and informing the object in question. Other ‘Platonic’ or ‘Ideal’ Forms include: Truth, Justice, and Love.

In more recent years, building on the work of Plato, Carl Jung further defined Ideal Forms as universals existing with the collective consciousness of all humanity that are sources of psychic energy. He called these universals Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. The word archetype itselfis derived from the Greek word archetupos, meaning first stamp, issuance, or imprint.

Jung sensed that archetypes are living primary psychic forces which compel us to take action, make certain choices, engage in certain behaviors, and perceive and evaluate life in specific ways. In addition, he felt that they must be acknowledged and integrated into our identities, lest they “fate us” into recognizing them through externalized events.

Building on the ideas of Plato and Jung, I define archetypes as: the original abstract and energetic forms, ideas, or patterns from which things manifest, specialize, and individuate; quantum conduits that pattern energy into matter – or energetic wave forms into particles. Essentially, archetypes are inborn forces which structure, create, and organize our life experiences, and which, paradoxically, seem to exist as external psychic forces, independent from us, as well.

Some examples of archetypes that we engage with are: the Child, the Victim, the Mother, and the Father. These archetypes are forces that all of us experience as part of being alive as human beings. Even if you lack one parent, you are still fused with the archetypes of Mother and Father as inner templates of your psyche. In addition, we all begin as children (the Child archetype) and have been victimized in some way or another in life (the Victim archetype.)

What’s more, the patterns mentioned above are not solely personal—they are universal, common to all of us on Earth. Archetypes not only creatively pattern us as individuals, but can influence the ways in which groups of people engage collectively. Think of the archetypes of the Warrior, Strategist, and Disciplinarian as they pattern the behavior of the military!

To get a deeper sense of how archetypes function universally, we must embrace the idea that, while living on Earth, we are connected to this solar system which is a living energy pattern itself—replete with archetypal patterns which manifest and unfold via a discernable, collectively patterned process. And the tool that maps out the archetypal processes of our solar system in none other than astrology. But what makes astrology archetypal?

Astrology

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Rorschach test, invented by a Swiss doctor as a psychological testing tool. Rorschach posited that by showing a client a series of twelve ink-blot images and soliciting a description of the client’s first visual impression, a therapist could view the symbolic representation of the interior unconscious life of a client.

From an objective point of view, clients are looking at nothing more than blots of color or an ink spill on paper. Subjectively, however, they are projecting something from their inner life onto the images–something that speaks of their psyches’ archetypal processes. My sense is that many thousands of years ago, this is exactly what our ancient ancestors began doing, but not with a splash of ink on a piece of paper, rather with the stars and planets in the night sky: the cosmos itself!

Imagine the Big Dipper. Most of us can recognize this configuration fairly easily in the night sky, no? But ask yourself, is there really a Big Dipper in the sky, or did we just recognize a pattern and name it so that we could identify some aspect of the cosmos in relationship to us, giving ourselves some coordinates in our celestial ceiling? This is exactly what the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks did as well, as they carefully and deliberately developed their ancient science.

Someone looked up and identified a bull in the night sky; another saw a ram, a third, perhaps, saw a scorpion, lion and, crab; and as the mythic mind of our ancestors created stories about this belt in the sky of various figures, which also includes gods and goddesses, they were mapping out the creative archetypal forces and patterns that give rise to this phenomenal world and the human experience. They were unconsciously projecting onto the stars and planets their inner creative psychic processes, archetypes, drives, complexes, fears, and intuitive understanding of life’s journey.

Little did they know that as they did so, they were mapping the archetypal architecture of this cosmos. For in hanging their psyches on the stars, they coordinated a universal archetypal unfolding which reveals the inherent structure and timing of creation in our solar system – a cosmic blueprint in the sky of our collective mythic creative process!

For the ancients this activity was motivated by a need to exert some control over their fates, and perhaps later on, was seen as a way of discerning the will of the Gods in order to better please them. In my lectures, I joke that the stars that we call constellations don’t really look like two fish, a bull, a lion or scales–come on now! Yet, the ancients saw these things because as they looked up, they saw fundamental aspects of themselves.

Ancient Babylonians actually believed that the movements of the planets were the Gods writing in the sky messages for mortals. Sensing that interpreting these messages would open a dialogue with Fate, they began to chart the movements and construct a system to discern the messages.

The Egyptians, thousands of years ago began to observe that the star Sirius, as observed from Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt, became visible just above the horizon at dawn at the same time that the Nile River was beginning to rise for its annual flood. Using celestial movement by charting the cycles of Sirius allowed the Egyptians to plan the planting of their crops, and guaranteed the maximized use of nature’s corresponding cycles to produce a bountiful harvest that would yield the year’s food supply–and a connection between what happens in the sky and on Earth was forged.

When Alexander the Great unified various cultures via his various conquests, many developing astrological systems and mythologies began to cross-pollinate. Out of this cultural fusion, the Greeks created some of the most elaborate myths of antiquity.

With that in mind, as Greek myths became the amalgamation of Alexander’s conquests, Greek astrology began to consolidate the mythological motifs of the constellations, various recorded planetary movements, and certain corresponding earthly phenomenon into a cohesive structure; thereby birthing the foundations of modern day astrology. Slowly, a tool that identified overarching archetypal patterns as mirrored in the planetary array and zodiac surfaced and later became our modern day Western astrological model.

Yet I must acknowledge that the ancients thought that these planets/gods actually caused things to happen. Even today, many astrologers believe that perhaps the planets cause events, of which I deeply disagree. For me, astrology is a map of synchronicity, not causality. Synchronicity is a work coined by Carl Jung that denotes something which happens externally simultaneously is connected to an inner meaning. Through synchronicity, astrology works based on the Law of Correspondences, which states:

As above, so below.

As within, so without.

As the Universe, so the Soul.

So really, the planets simply mirror back what is going on inside of us, in accordance with the law of synchronicity. Astrology works because it embraces the ultimate truth that “all is one.” This is a quantum physics fact. The ancients had already intuited through myth the archetypes that we have associated with the heavenly bodies and planets long before many of the planets were discovered.

For example, let’s look at the planet Pluto. The archetype of Pluto existed long before the planet was actually discovered by astronomy. Pluto symbolizes sex, power, death, transformation, and rebirth. Is it accurate to say that the planet Pluto causes death and transformation to happen in our lives?

Not all astrologers agree with me, but I don’t think so. The planet Pluto is really an external manifestation that is symbolic of an inner, and simultaneously, universal archetype. Thus, the discovery of Pluto gave us a way to externally perceive a level of cosmic reality, which is inextricably linked to our interior. I also would say that Pluto’s demotion as a planet is also very noteworthy based on what it represents and the symbolic reasons it was demoted (something to be covered in one of my newsletters!).

That being said, we will often experience the archetypal movements any planet, as both inner and outer manifestations of cyclical change. This is where the true value of astrological guidance begins to shine! I have found that there is a strong correlation between how much an archetype is internally versus externally experienced based on the level of awareness you bring to what that archetype is trying to transform within your life. Now I’ve just touched on what makes astrology an archetypal system, but let’s go further into how it can be used, while addressing the misperceptions of astrology in our culture that hold it hostage to various stereotypes…

Archetypal Astrology

If we look at the astrological model from an archetypal and mythic perspective, we see can see an exquisite legacy left to us from our ancient ancestors: a cosmic map of the human psyche that extends beyond just the notion of the Ego and personal unconscious into a creative pantheon of forces within each of us.

As we are connected to these same forces identified thousands of years ago via the continuum of the collective consciousness of humanity and embedded within the same cosmic architecture, rhythm, and process; we can begin to see just how valid a modern understanding of astrology really can be, if used as a tool of synchronicity to map universal archetypal processes as well as the individual fused within them: a map of our Cosmic Contract.

Unfortunately, astrology has been maligned in our culture — and if not maligned, it certainly has been marginalized as entertainment for fashion magazines, or fodder for pseudo-fortune telling. I’ve also noticed that many people also use it as a way to excuse their bad behavior. How many times have you said, or heard someone else say something like, “I can’t help being flaky, I’m such a Gemini?” This sort of thinking reveals the unfortunate ignorance most of us have regarding this amazing system and tool. Furthermore, although we live in a different time and consciousness than that of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, using the cyclical movements of the heavens still has a very practical application to the understanding of our relationship not only to our world at large, but to the aspirations and intentions of our soul.

For example, we can perceive through planetary patterns how to cooperate with our inner natural law and rhythm of becoming. Beginning with your birth chart — a cosmic map of where all the planets and zodiacal signs were when you took your first breath — you can learn to decode your soul’s intention, life’s purpose, highest potential, limitations, Fate, Destiny, archetypal patterning, and relationship to your cultural, societal, and familial inheritance. In terms of quantum physics, your birth chart is the container in which manifests in particle form the potential that exists in energetic-wave form outside of the present moment of your life. The birth chart shows how your life’s potential is pulled from both your future and past into the present. Therefore the birth chart contains within its structure the code that literally constructs your reality. Its symbolic code is the software program that creates your perceptions of life, rendering astrology much more than the mere entertainment that daily/monthly horoscopes found in periodicals offer. In fact, nothing has done more damage to the collective perception of astrology than those lucky horoscopes blinking in the back pages of the daily rag. Speaking of which, let’s take a moment to look at the Sun sign that these publications speak of and how I view that in your specific birth chart.

The Sun Sign-Your Archetypal Core

First of all, no one can generalize who you are solely based on your Sun sign, which is the constellation the Sun was in when you were born, based on the tropical zodiac of astrology (i.e. if you were born August 16th, your Sun sign is Leo; or May 9th, your Sun sign is Taurus, etc). Reading daily horoscopes based on this alone is way too general and, quite frankly, nothing but mere entertainment.

We all have a specific natal/birth chart (that is erected based on the exact date, time, and place of our birth), which is completely specific to each of us and contains all the other planets, twelve houses, lunar nodes, and four core angles, not to mention the Moon! Furthermore, the natal chart shows how these planetary forces relate to each other via their exact alignments in the heavens relative to your first breath in your new body on earth. The birth chart has encoded within its structure your life’s patterns, cycles, and soul’s intention. This is your own personal archetypal map and clock that shows the timing of your personal development and transformations.

Though your Sun sign symbolizes the central coordinating archetypal force within your birth chart – much in the same way the Sun’s gravity anchors the planets in their orbits, it doesn’t necessarily represent what you innately are, nor is it that which describes your personality the most! It’s possible the Sun sign describes some dominant qualities you might have, but often these qualities are often not innately yours. In fact, you have earned and continue to birth them into your character.

Furthermore, while many may feel they personify the entire cookbook list of qualities for their sun sign found in basic astrology books, others conversely dismiss astrology because they do not feel that they can identify at all with any of the characteristics of their Sun sign!

This is because the Sun sign is the archetypal container of your soul’s evolution and growth. It represents the solar hero/heroine’s journey, in a lifelong creative process of becoming, but its qualities often have to be earned through life experience. Earth school will always provide all the opportunities for the actualization of the qualities symbolized by the Sun sign.

For example, if you have a Libra sun sign, your life will draw in experiences that force you to learn the art of compromise in relationships, how to make peace and mediate, how to be fair/just, how to see both sides of a situation, how to make holistic decisions, how to appreciate beauty, and how to see yourself reflected in others….but most of this has to be learned.

Often what is intrinsic to your character and most familiar to you is the archetypal energy of your Moon sign. I always think of the Moon sign as from whence we’ve come, and the Sun as where we keep going. If your Moon and Sun are in the same sign, then you incarnated in this lifetime to polish and expand in your soul the qualities that archetype embodies. The older you get, the more you will tend to resonate with the archetype of your Sun sign – hopefully!

Though the astrological birth chart itself maps an exquisite archetypal framework through which we individuate into our purpose, there are many various ways that our purpose can manifest through this framework. Said another way, a child who is five years old can have the same chart of a dog! What makes the difference in how both a child and a dog manifest their life force through a birth chart? Or twins essentially born with the same birth chart?

What makes the difference is the soul or consciousness animating the archetypal structure of birth chart. And it’s here that we must enter into intuition to perceive and connect with the soul’s consciousness and intention is using this archetypal structure.

Intuition

Most people think that intuitives have the ability to read minds, or perhaps know everything about someone and their future. That is simply not true, and if anyone tells you that they are an intuitive that can tell you anything you want to know about yourself and the future, run the other way!

Intuition is a skill of the soul, not the ego. Thus, as an intuitive I know that I will not be allowed to perceive something I do not have the maturity to handle or that may get in the way of another’s process of learning. Rather, I am always allowed to intuitively receive information that will help empower your creative process and life. The Universe and your guides will, in fact, only let me see so much – I have no doubt learned this the hard way!

That said when I began learning the tool of Astrology in 1992; immediately I sensed that my relationship with astrology was special. Just how special, I could have never imagined. Even in my early days of learning astrology, it was easy for me to look at the birth horoscope and use its symbols to crack the purpose and meaning of another’s life. I could never have foreseen that eventually I would fuse astrology with intuition and thereby enter into another’s soul.

As with anything in life, my study and practice of Astrology has been in a constant state of evolution. About a year into doing astrological readings on clients, something else began to surface while working with client’s charts. A latent intuitive ability began to develop which launched my readings to an entirely different level. I began to download new levels of data on clients that, based on traditional astrology, wasn’t found in the birth chart. Rather, it seemed to come from the soul’s code, or agreements that the client had made with the Universe prior to incarnation. I like to call this your “cosmic contract”. Eventually I began to perceive that many of our patterns come from a familial and socio-cultural inheritance, like psychic DNA. In short, what I was beginning to perceive in the patterns and life cycles of clients seemed to render many of the old astrological textbook formulas obsolete! Years have passed since those early days, and I have been blessed by the influence of pioneers, not only within evolutionary and psychological astrology, but in intuitive development—most notably my colleague and friend, world renowned intuitive Caroline Myss. In fact, it was Caroline’s encouragement that catalyzed my path as an intuitive astrologer.

Intuitive-Archetypal Astrology

Each of our souls made an agreement prior to our arrival on Earth to participate within the creative matrix energy field of this solar system; its archetypal patterns, laws, and timing. And while astrology offers a detailed archetypal blueprint of these layers of influence within your life, developing a honed intuitive skill is essential to perceiving the consciousness of the soul and the specific ways it will create through these fated patterns, out of which Destiny is born. Until an integrated approach is developed and used within the field of astrology which is archetypal and intuitive; astrologers will be limited to vague assessment of birth charts and only able to offer the most generic of guidance.

My work with intuitive-archetypal astrology continues to evolve, and I sense that there is much more to discover! Now that we know we live in an archetypal and quantum universe, it seems only fitting that our intuitive tools should evolve with this new understanding. Unfortunately, most modern day astrological literature is based on a medieval model of astrology, making the need for a new astrological model urgent in a world where we co-create reality. The time has arrived for astrology, science, and spirituality to merge once again, in renewed understanding.

The gods of the ancients found in the heavens are really the gods within. On the shoulders of the civilizations that first mapped out the heavens do we currently stand as part of a continuous evolution of humanity’s consciousness, with new awareness regarding the nature of reality.

I sincerely hope that a new understanding of the immense value of what intuitive-archetypal astrology can offer you will serve you well on your quest for liberty, and that Ohotto.com can be a great aide in such an endeavor. In addition, I have created the Ananke-Apollo Institute out of my passion for sharing the insights I’ve gained via my work with intuitive-archetypal astrology.

The time is ripe to reach out our hands and grasp a little more of that Promethean fire from Olympus. This fire will illuminate our path to freedom. Are you ready for liberation? Godspeed!

Namaste,
Robert Ohotto