Further Circles

In creating this blog I was inspired by a book I read, "The Archetypal Cosmos" by Keiron Le Grice, subtitled Rediscovering the Gods, in Myths, Science and Astrology. In it, Le Grice surveys the history of myth and its function from Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung to the new paradigm scientists.  What was so remarkable to me is that this survey and Le Grice's findings parallel completely what Marcus Aurelius, who is quoted above, said in 100 AD. The universe and all that is in it is created from the same "stuff". The difference being that Aurelius wrote it with out the benefit of  the discoveries of  modern empirical physics.

So there is nothing new under the sun. We are just confirming what has always been known intuitively. 
These past 2,000 years have been about the discovery of the validity of those intuitions concerning the nature of the universe and the relationship of a part to the whole. 

Le Grice starts his book by exploring the work of Joseph Campbell who wrote extensively about the many functions of myth.  Myths were not just made up stories to explain natural phenomen, but had functions.  Myths were used to explain man's place in the universe.  Campbell's central thesis, Le Grice writes, is that the stories of myths should be read as metaphors that can be related to our own experiences providing 'perspective and symbolic meaning'.

In the more modern mind we have lost the externalization of the Gods doing this and that to us. Our demons are no longer outside but have become our own self destructive habits and vices. But rather than feeling we are being left alone to make our way with self determination and free will, wouldn't we do better by understanding and acknowledging that the forces in our external environment are the actual manifestations of our internal space. The psychological explorations that relective people go through, supported with all the self help books, programs, healing modalities and religions are one way we can source our own personal myth.  By questing after our own personal myth, as Jung did, are we not less  the victim of the gods anger or pleasure as of old, but are more personally responsible for our fate as we become  more clearly defined individuals. Can astrology help with that journey into inner space?