The Cosmos and the Zodiac.

Contemporary Cosmology and a Traditional Representation of the Whole.

1. Myth and science

We sometimes read that certain myths or ancient philosophies predict certain discoveries made by modern science. In other words, modern science is simply rediscovering what has always been known. In the same spirit, the philosopher of science Karl Popper, known for his criteria for demarcating science from non-science, could not help admitting that, “historically speaking all—or very nearly all—scientific theories originate from myths, and that a myth may contain important anticipations of scientific theories.” (p. 38)

It is now widely acknowledged that quantum physics has brought back to light many of the “thought structures” of Eastern philosophies such as the Upanishads, Taoist texts and so on. Of course, even if they draw from the same source, scientific discourse differs in its demands for rationality, rigor in theorization and empirical verification. The only scientific statements are those that can be falsified, i.e., those that can be invalidated by new experiments.

This is how science advances, as Popper shows: by falsification and progressive refinement of its content. Worldviews may change, but knowledge always increases when a model is superseded by a more inclusive one. In comparison, a myth, a symbolic statement, does not bring new explanations. It just gives rise to new interpretations. Myth and science are two distinct approaches, but the recent history of science has shown that they both draw on a common source: intuition.

2. The need to distinguish between levels of reality

Contrary to what has been asserted in the history of science (trapped in the prevailing scientism of the late 19th century, which dreamed of making reality transparent and malleable as desired), science was not built as a purely rational process in opposition to “crazy” irrational belief. In fact, the founders of modern science, Kepler and Newton, were enthusiasts of astrology, alchemy and numerology. Contrary to what some historians of science said, this was not a means of earning a living. In fact, these practices proved to be consubstantial with their scientific activity. They enabled them to intuitively grasp the nature of the cosmic and divine order.  At the end of a perfectly rational process, the initial illumination sometimes led to the writing of mathematical laws, such as the very first formula in the history of physics in 1618.

Discovered by the astronomer Kepler, the law of planetary orbits quantifies the relationship between the length of the semi-major axis of the ellipse and the period of revolution. By attributing to the Sun and planets an attractive or repulsive “soul” or “driving force” by analogy with magnetization, this visionary foresaw universal gravitation. Bathed in the love of the soul of the world, the solar system reflected infinite divine love. In 1687, Kepler’s intuition was clarified and embraced by Newton. While not hypothesizing the origin of his universal gravitational force, he evoked a certain subtle spirit that penetrated all solid bodies.

Later, in the early 20th century, when it came up against the paradoxes of the discoveries of quantum physics, science had to give way to a multi-level conception of reality. In his book La science et l’âme du monde, philosopher Michel Cazenave distinguished four levels of manifestation, hierarchically generated from the unknowable One-Being.(p.69) This is a vertical vision with two complementary movements: the descent of Being toward the being, and the ascent of the being toward Being. There is only a science of being, and it is from the confusion between Being and being that delusions and fantasies are born.

The logic of Being encompasses the logic of being, also known as Aristotelian logic. The latter is limited to the principle of identity (A is A), the principle of non-contradiction (A is not non-A) and the excluded middle (there is no third term T of the “included middle” that is both A and non-A.). The logic of being, or Aristotelian logic, gives a perfect account of the empirical reality of the first two levels of reality listed below:

1) The plane of separate phenomena, relatively independent and subject as such to analytical study. This is the “realm of beings” that corresponds to classical physics and the psychology of the conscious.

2) The plane of phenomenal globalities (relativistic and quantum) that we are still trying to unify. This is also the plane of the psychic totality actualized in an individual (conscious + unconscious).  This is the level of reality of the “Totality-of-beings” or, in David Bohm’s terminology, the level of “implicated order” from which particular beings originate as fleeting differentiations of the “explicated order” of matter.

3) The plane of a potential totality beyond our consciousness and, therefore, not accessible to science. This is the ‘Plane-of-Being’, the place of paradoxes and complementary pairs (Particle-Wave, Conscious-Unconscious) or, in Bohmian terms, the super-implicated level. In logical terms, there is a third term T of the “included middle” that is both A and non-A.

4) Being itself, “of which nothing can be described that is not negation, and negation of negation, of which nothing can be said that is not ascent, alienation, or nostalgia of Being” (Caz. p.71). The logical transcription in this level would be: A is neither A nor non-A.

3. The Quest for the One and projections of the unconscious

This hierarchy of planes of existence between Being and us cannot go without links, “or else how could one access the thought of Being?” (Caz. p.71) This author proposes the symbol of a multifaceted mirroring system where mirrors reflect each other, each higher plane reflecting itself in the lower plane, and each lower degree being the actualization of the virtual realities of the higher plane. “From level to level, Being is thereby reflected, and at the same time, the Being dwells up to the realm of sensory existence—although it absolutely transcends it in its successive foundations.” (Caz. p.71)

All thought comes down to unifying, getting to the root of the first principle, exercising the problem of the One and the many. The first mathematical “unifiers” (Newton, Faraday etc.) were religious in nature and based their hypotheses on representations of the divine principle. In the 20th century, the first model of the whole was made possible by the invention of the concept of space-time. In 1915, Einstein demonstrated that the universe is not an immutable structure of space in which phenomena are driven by forces. The universe of physics is, thus, identified with space-time, “deformable” by the presence of matter. But the universe cannot be seen as such. In the depths of the sky, we can only see portions of the universe at different moments in its history. Ultimately, the object of contemporary cosmology has become the narrative of the history of the universe.

As for the tireless quest for unity of the first “unifiers”, it is pursued today in the program to unify the known forces of physics. In a way, physicists still “believe” in the way back to the One. They assume that the 4 forces would have been united 13.7 billion years ago, when the temperature and energy of the universe reached the so-called Planck values (1.4×10³² Kelvins and 10¹⁹ GeV = 1.956×10⁹ Joules).

Parallel to this “unassumed” return to the One, and from the very beginnings of contemporary cosmology in 1917, purely psychic—not to mention religious—considerations were invited into the debates to reject an evolutionary model, before the latter finally imposed itself in the face of observational evidence. In fact, a new model can only emerge through the patterns of the unconscious, which both imprint and limit primary intuition. Today’s dominant universe model originated with the mathematician Alexandre Friedmann, who in 1922 was the first to foresee—against Einstein and his cosmological constant—the possibility of the universe evolving. In 1927, Georges Lemaître predicted the overall movement of the universe’s galaxies, which, according to this cosmologist-and-abbot, led to what he called in 1931 the “Primeval Atom”, the ancestor of the “Big Bang”. In 1948, Georges Gamow, taking the hypothesis seriously and its immediate consequence of an expanding hot universe, predicted fossil radiation. The latter was discovered in 1965, “definitively” confirming the model of an evolving universe. It is likely (evoked by Cazenave) that these three scientists were consciously or unconsciously influenced by their inclination toward a historical pattern, since one was steeped in the Christian myth of a creator God, and the other two had been brought up in Marxism, i.e., according to the rationalized myth of history and the existence of a time oriented to create a paradise on earth.

So, science, like religion and myth, proceeds from projections of the unconscious onto the unknown of matter and the cosmos. The scientist only becomes aware that this is a projection when his model no longer corresponds to his observations. A new representation may then emerge from the depths of the unconscious, manifesting itself in the form of a new model, a fresher idea, in other words a new projection onto the universe, and so on. The difference between myth and science lies in the fact that myth remains at the level of vision, whereas science, starting from the same intuitive and pictorial first steps, develops these into scientific hypotheses that, through long processes of reflection and discrimination, lead to new mathematical models.

4. Projections of the unconscious and reflections of the unknowable One-Being

Of the two preceding modes of knowledge, science is the only one that enables us to advance toward ever greater knowledge. It constantly strives to clarify the vision obscured by the projective veils of nascent humanity, by refuting and superseding old models. It shows with increasing precision that which we can no longer affirm, such as the instantaneity of light. Through measurement or observation, reality “resists” certain models, rendering them false. Knowledge of this reality is growing in a negative way, reminiscent of the negative paths of both Eastern and Western traditions, which seek to penetrate the essence of things by going through a cycle of descent and ascent into a vertical conception of Being in Cazenave’s terminology.

Acknowledging the incomparable merit of science does not mean that this mode of knowledge becomes an end in itself, positing reason as an absolute power. Science and mythical thought combine according to a genetic process that, as Cazenave writes,

is endlessly engendered in a progressive history, i.e., that of the conquest of intelligibility and personal differentiation, and a vertical process of descent and ascent in which it is, so to speak, the final mirror of Being that articulates one to the other descent and ascent, in a topography of Being that escapes all history. (p. 104)

Confronting the contemporary cosmological narrative with the ancient “science of the stars” can only be understood today insofar as astrology is understood as belonging to the symbolic realm and that this realm is considered to be on the same level of dignity as the scientific realm. Thus, primitive humanity projected ancient mythology into the sky by delineating 12 groupings of stars—12 constellations that would later become the 12 signs of the zodiac. This symbolic structure represents one of the oldest ways of unlocking the impenetrable mystery surrounding the origin of nature and the totality of human experience.

Since Kepler’s decoupling of astrology and astronomy, science has answered many questions about the origin and composition of the universe. Today, the long-term evolution of the universe vacillates among several possibilities with, it seems, a growing preference for cyclic evolution. The ancient fascination with the cycle, traditionally the figuration of divinity, survived the recent discovery of dark energy in 1998. The latter ruled out, a priori, a cyclical evolution due to expansion, which had to be eternal. Yet the ensuing rarefaction of matter would produce a state of “quantum vacuum” very close to the initial conditions that pre-existed the era of inflation through which the present history of the universe began. We might, therefore, wonder to what extent this predilection for the cycle in contemporary cosmological narrative might reflect the ancient cyclical figure of the zodiac.

5. Numbers, the zodiac and the unus mundus

The zodiac is a symbolic representation of the totality (mandala) found in Egypt, Persia, India, China, America and Scandinavia. As with the qualitative aspect of numbers, we are here in the realm of symbols and the qualitative time inherent in this realm of reality. The zodiac exists by and within itself, in the order of reality of the world soul, which is an original “cosmic fluid” that refers to the unconscious in the modern language of psychology. Mathematically structured according to Plato, the soul is the universal binder, intermediary between mind and matter. It is also the world of the imagination, in the metaphysical sense of the term, that invents the very forms through which we can represent the world.

Consubstantial with the existence of this soul, the ancient alchemical notion of unus mundus corresponds to the model of the physical and sensory universe. Reflecting on the complementarity between psyche and matter, psychologist Carl Gustav Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli took up this notion of unitary reality, potential in relation to our empirical world, which is its manifestation. Their conception is close to Spinoza’s theory according to which

mind and matter are related to a ‘unity of essence’. It does so by concatenating an ontological monism with an epistemological dualism, yielding an overall worldview in which both philosophy and the sciences can find appropriate places and mutual relations.

This “dual-aspect monism” appears in the aforementioned physicist David Bohm’s work: mind and matter are the dual manifestation in explicate order of the same underlying reality, which is the super-implicate order.  Likewise, for Bernard d’Espagnat, there is a Being—or an ineffable Real—conceptually anterior to the mind-matter split of human thought. Although “veiled”, “something” of the structures of this independent primordial reality passes in the laws of physics, what he labels “calls of Being” (pp. 463-4).

So, with these metaphysical hypotheses, a new scientific spirit is coming to accept the existence of a reality in a mode other than that of immediate reality. This new spirit makes it possible to envisage a dialogue between science and religious or mythical traditions, but a true dialogue can only take place through the medium of the symbol, a domain that must regain its dignity.

The signs of the zodiac are symbols, also known as archetypal images.  These archetypal images, or symbols, are not to be confused with archetypes, which are theoretical, unknowable empty forms, referring to the unus mundus model, i.e., the matrix—and potential—universe of which extended matter and the thinking intellect are manifested aspects. The zodiac appears as an aspect of the essential rhythmic structure of the soul of the world, centered on what Jung, in the field of the unconscious, calls the Self. The latter is the super-organizer archetype of the circle of archetypes, a circumambulation of the archetypes around the Self. With its 12 rotating archetypal images, the Zodiac mandala illustrates in its own way the rhythm of the world’s soul, harmoniously combining the numbers three and four. The ternary denotes an unfolding movement of the One, while the quaternary, symbolizing inner deepening, incorporates the unconscious and instinctive roots in human conscious evolution.

Each quadrant of the zodiac is divided into three successive signs that reflect manifestation according to the generation of the spirit, the concentration of the soul and the distribution of the mind. (p. 211). In a nutshell and in other words, these three successive sign qualities (cardinal, fixed, mutable) articulate with the two genders (masculine, feminine) and the four elements (air, water, earth, fire) in a subtle interweaving that gives the zodiac the nature of a totality never closed in on itself, always greater than the sum of its parts.

6. The zodiac, the 4 seasons and the Yin and Yang symbol

The zodiac is, thus, a psycho-spiritual representation of totality. Its link with the unfolding of the seasons in the northern hemisphere makes it a structure analogous to the oriental symbol of the Tao (the Yin Yang symbol, see figure below). In this spirit, a key reference is Dane Rudhyar, who in 1943 wrote a new interpretation of the 12 signs of the zodiac, always well ahead of his time.

The Western zodiac is naturally illustrated by the transformation of nature or a plant over the course of the four seasons. Throughout the annual cycle of the sun’s march, two forces interpenetrate and alternate in intensity. The “Yang” analogous to the “Day-Force”, the personalizing energy (in white in the figure above), begins to grow at the winter solstice. The “Yin”, analogous to the unifying “Night-Force” (in black in the figure), begins to grow at the summer solstice. At the spring and autumn equinoxes, the length of day equals the length of night, and the two forces are in unstable equilibrium.

By day, we see only the Sun, and the Day-Force is a personalizing energy. At night, we see the company of the stars, and so the Night-Force is an in-gathering, collectivizing energy, which begins to grow at the summer solstice in Cancer, the sign of the home. It grows through Leo and Virgo. In Libra, as the personality blossoms within society, it urges the individual to seek an ever deeper identification with ever greater collectivities.

At the winter solstice, i.e., Capricorn, the Night-Force triumphs. It is the vast collective organism of the State, which dominates even its leaders. Rudhyar also illustrates this sign with the figure of the oriental yogi who, although a beggar and living alone, participates in society in his own way. But in Capricorn the personalizing energy of the Day-Force awakens. It begins to grow at Christmas and only becomes clearly visible in Aries, the symbol of germination. Rudhyar illustrates this awakening with the figure of Christ—the symbol of spiritual incarnation—being born into the vast collective organism of the Capricornian Roman Empire. In this second part of the zodiacal cycle, the Day-Force pushes the ideas or spiritual entities to take on a concrete, particular body, to establish themselves at the center of a personality with the “I am” feeling that culminates in Cancer.

In another of his writings, Rudhyar reformulates cyclic evolution with a more philosophical approach, where the two polar principles are Unity and Multiplicity.

They interact within the framework of a symbolic day and its 4 points: ‘Sunrise’, ‘Midday’, ‘Sunset’ and ‘Midnight’. The sign of Cancer (symbolic Noon) corresponds to the maximum strength of the principle of Multiplicity, and Capricorn (symbolic Midnight) corresponds to the maximum strength of the principle of Unity.

7. The symbolic nature of the zodiac. The thirteenth sign and the “other” zodiacs.

Confusing “sign” with “constellation”, some detractors of astrology insinuate that a “thirteenth” sign of the zodiac has been forgotten. Of course, there is a thirteenth constellation, i.e., a thirteenth grouping of stars seen from Earth and located between the constellations Scorpio and Sagittarius. Already known to the Babylonians 3,200 years ago, they never took it into account, and not only because of its total eccentricity in relation to the ecliptic circle. Because, for these Chaldean priests, there could only be 12 constellations in their “sidereal” or “fixed” zodiac—12 constellations, admittedly of unequal sizes, but 12 and only 12 because of the archetypal nature of this number.

If the Western zodiac of signs is linked to the seasons, it is due to the motion of the Earth which, in addition to the rotation on itself in one day and around the Sun in one year, includes other components such as the precession, which is analogous to the motion of a top (see figure below).

Long before the Copernican Revolution and advances in mechanics, ancient astronomers had already observed one of the manifestations of this, which is a gradual change in the direction of the axis of rotation with a complete revolution in 26,000 years. As a result, the beginning of spring (vernal point) in the Northern Hemisphere moves along the ecliptic by about 1 degree 23 minutes per century. Following Hipparchus’ discovery of the “precession of the equinoxes” in 130 B.C., the Western world “chose” to locate the planets in relation to the “Zodiac of Signs”, a zodiac of 12 equal portions of the sky, moving retrograde in relation to the constellations. Strictly speaking, this zodiac is that of 12 moments modeled on the seasons, just as the 12 “houses” reflecting the Earth’s rotational movement on itself can be considered indifferently as either 12 durations of 2 hours or 12 portions of space of 30 degrees.

In any case, this discrepancy between the two zodiacs is brandished as an argument by astrology’s detractors just as much as it is by the proponents of scientific astrology, who maintain that celestial bodies have a causal influence (forgetting that a chart also includes fictitious, non-material points). This ignores the fact that, except in its period of decadence when astrology was contaminated by science, astrology has never spoken of causal influence but of correlation, i.e., how events happen together. In fact, these causal astrologers seek to adorn astrology with scientific ornaments that they consider more noble than its symbolic nature.

The West, son of the East, has “chosen” to transfer the longitude of the stars to a mobile zodiac, in keeping with the more rapidly changing nature of its civilization. In conjunction with the necessary distinctions already made (archetype-in-itself and archetypal images or symbols), we are led to question the existence of multiple and dissimilar zodiacs. The different zodiacs that exist or have existed throughout the world are archetypal or symbolic representations that may point to the hypothesis of the same unknowable vibration of the world’s soul, centered around the Self postulated by Jung. This fundamental undulation would have the nature of a universal base and empty framework that would subsist under the various Greek, Tibetan, African, Aztec and other astrologies.

8. Reflections of the zodiac

The next step is to complete the examination of the reflections of a 4×3 qualitative numerical structure already highlighted in the cosmological narrative by questioning the symbolism of this isomorphic structure, the zodiac. To what extent does contemporary cosmological discourse match the 12 archetypal figures of the ancient “Belt of Ishtar”?

First of all, a few remarks need to be made about the physical time that orders events in the history of the universe. The times and durations used in physics, and particularly in cosmology, are very far from the magnitudes of everyday life. What counts is the density of the number of events. A very short period of time in the past can contain a far greater number of events than a much longer period of time in the distant future. So, we start from the “birth of time” posited at Planck’s time t_P = 10^-43 seconds to the evaporation of black holes at 10¹⁰⁰ years, passing through the present (13.7 billion years) and the hypothetical disintegration of protons at 10³⁴ years. If we can use a single time scale to date events, it is because the universe is assumed to be homogeneous and isotropic. This simplifying assumption, which is more or less in line with observations, makes it possible to separate time from space in the mathematical “space-time” which, since Einstein, has been identified with the modern concept of the “universe”.

Finally, a last remark about life and consciousness: Cosmologists usually regard them as epiphenomena destined to disappear on Earth in 4 billion years at the latest. Recently, however, scientific approaches have been put forward, such as that which assumes the collapse of the wave function in quantum physics to be a real phenomenon accompanying consciousness. Hence the qualifier “objective” in Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff’s Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) model.

In the same spirit, physicist John Wheeler’s formulation “it from bit” argues for a physics of information more or less related to consciousness. Physical reality (it) would be pure information (bit), and the universe would be “participatory”. As with Penrose, this is an intuition about the meaning of “information”—a notion that Wheeler hopes understanding will advance. As for the future of life and consciousness in the distant future of the universe, they have been the subject of bold but highly speculative scientific hypotheses. These models are based on the idea that life and consciousness do not depend on the type of matter in the substrate but rather on its structure. Life and consciousness could, thus, endure on all kinds of substrates, other than the carbon-based one.

8.1. Aries: Fire, Masculine, Cardinal. The bursting of a primordial unity.

[From 10^-35 seconds to one micro (10^-6) second].

The sign of Aries begins with the breaking of the exact symmetry of day and night at the spring equinox. It represents the shattering of a primordial unity and the starting point of the subject’s identity. It is often depicted as a drop of water rising from the ocean representing the preceding sign of Pisces. Cosmology reflects this process in the so-called “inflation” model, in which the universe is said to have arisen from a bubble of very dense, energy-rich primordial vacuum, following a “symmetry breaking” of this quantum vacuum.

This spontaneous symmetry breaking would have triggered the vertiginous expansion of space: space, the geometry as it were, would have emerged from one of the fluctuations of the quantum vacuum and grown exponentially. By associating the “mathematical zero” of physical time with the “universe reduced to a point” state, the universe would have “passed” through a first “phase transition” at t_P = 10^-43 seconds, during which the force of gravity would have decoupled from the three other, still indistinct forces. Thus, the real, extremely short inflationary period during which space was created would only have begun at 10^-35 seconds, when the strong nuclear force detached itself from the electroweak force. Completed at 10^-32s, this period recalls the symbolism of the sign of Aries in that it represents the first stage of human development, when the consciousness of being a separate individual emerges. In cosmology, the universe differentiates itself from other potential universes (other vacuum fluctuations) and manifests its abundant pre-material energy.

Several inflation models have been proposed, but so far, no observations have been able to validate them. Following Wheeler’s “it from bit”, physicist Paola Zizzi has demonstrated that, at the Planck scale, spacetime is discrete and divided into Planck units. Each unit can be organized into pixels, each encoding a qubit. Quantum spacetime, thus, behaves like a quantum computer. From then on, physical laws are merely the macroscopic resultant of qubit dynamics on the Planck scale.

At the start of inflation, the universe would have been in a state of superposition of quantum registers (or multiple universes in Everett’s sense) until the multiverse reached a threshold value such that the phenomenon of objective reduction in Penrose’s sense occurred. Triggered by the underlying gravitational field, the collapse of the quanto-relativistic wave function that bound the multiple universes would have potentially endowed the universe with a capacity for the emergence of consciousness. Thus, the space created during the time of inflation would have been the subject of an event described as the “Big Wow”. Paola Zizzi uses the Diósi–Penrose equation already used by Penrose for the orchestrated wavefunction collapse processes in the microtubules of the Homo-Sapiens brain. They will intervene in the phase of the universe’s history corresponding to the emergence of reflective consciousness, which will be associated with the sign of Libra.

Thus, the “Big Wow” of the inflationary period of the primordial universe is in polarity with the “moments of consciousness” or “Bings” in the microtubules of the Homo-Sapiens brain. Paola Zizzi notes a coincidence in the number of quantum registers, i.e., the number of superpositions created before the universe is reduced to the classical state. This number, equal to 10⁹, is the same as the number of tubulins in a state of superposition in our brain, just before being subject to the gravito-quantum collapse that produces the “Bings”! In terms of quantum information, the primordial macrocosm universe, thus, has the computing power required to enable the emergence of human consciousness. Human consciousness appears as the microcosm of the macrocosmic “moment of consciousness” that occurred during the Big Bang.

Obviously, the consciousness in the symbolism of Aries, is not “reflexive”. This requires a focus, an ego that can only be built with the appearance of material structures in the later phases when light and matter will be decoupled. As Rudhyar writes, at the Aries stage of development

personality is still not quite separated from the act. It is contained in the direct immediacy of an activity caused by an irrational power which, at one level, is “instinct” and at another “God” […] In Aries, the “pulsing of life”—of the creative Breath—is felt. It passes through. It surges forth—and is gone. Aries power is the power of the lightning, which descends from above, which strikes out of the darkness of the Collective Unconscious. (pp. 34-35)

8. 2. Taurus: Earth, Feminine, Fixed. Coagulation in matter.

[From one micro (10^-6) second to 10 minutes]

Taurus corresponds to Mother-Nature or Cosmic-Matter, the material through which generative forces coagulate and consolidate. It is a power of binding, attraction or repulsion, inertia and passive resistance that fixes Aries’ creative impulse, giving it substance and depth.

The characteristics of Taurus are reflected in the post-inflationary universe, which continues to expand at a more measured pace. Expansion is accompanied by a drop in temperature. When it reaches 10¹³ degrees, the universe is a millionth of a second old. The strong nuclear interaction forces quarks (more “fundamental” subatomic particles) to associate with each other and form more complex ensembles. Known as “quark confinement”, this phase reflects the power of attraction and repulsion inherent in the second sign governed by Venus.

The “coagulation” of matter is described through the manifestation of a “Higgs field”, whose role is to give “mass” to particles of “classical” matter, and perhaps also to those of “dark matter”, which accounts for 80% of the gravitational matter in the universe. Penrose names “erebons” (after Erebos, the Greek god of darkness) the extremely massive particles that would constitute the “dark” form of as yet unobserved matter (necessary for the stabilization of galaxies in the later stage associated with the fixed and fire sign of Leo.)

This is how Taurus reflects the “incarnation” of Aries’ pre-material creative impulse. For ten minutes or so, the nuclear forces that generate primordial nucleosynthesis fix the impulse of primordial inflation and coat it with matter. They build a stable, permanent form, allowing the universe’s “potential abilities” to take shape.

8.3. Gemini: Air, Masculine, Mutable. The friction between light and matter.

[From 10 minutes to 380,000 years]

The individual impulse of Aries, channeled and materialized in Taurus, develops fluid, imperceptible and impalpable links in Gemini. This initial aspiration has become a power of intercommunication, linking the smallest intervals as in a nervous system or transport network.  Mental, physical or social movements form a constant dance that disseminates information.

The third stage of the cosmological story clearly reflects the exchanges that take place in the immediate environment of each particle of matter. Photons are the mediators of this communication. They are the vectors of electromagnetic interaction, whose waves propagate information. As for electrons, they are not “attached” to atomic nuclei: matter is “ionized”. In its entirety, the universe is a “plasma”. Electrons constantly collide with photons of light, which (analogously) refer to the communication of information in the immediate environment that is specific to the third sign. At the Gemini stage,

the raw materials of associative activity are impressions, nervous sensations, immediate reactions to impacts reaching the senses and the consciousness. At the level of the mind, remembrance, comparison, analysis, and the formation of mental images to be expressed through words, are phases of an activity which develops the intellect through the use of language. This development is originally contained in the sphere of the near environment and constantly referred to the individual who, through it, relates himself with an ever-increasing number of facets of human nature. (p. 46)

This cosmological stage, in which matter interacts with light, reflects Gemini. The opaque plasma, from which photons cannot escape due to constant collisions with other particles (protons, electrons, helium nuclei), evokes the necessary process of integrating the child’s inevitable shocks with the environment. How to react to the various impressions received in everyday contact? Every child instinctively tries to find out how far he can go in every direction, both physically and psychologically, before seeing his gesture or action stopped by something or someone.

This cosmic “friction” between matter and light is analogous to the friction experienced by the propagation of optical light through the Earth’s atmosphere. Water droplets in clouds “scatter” light. We cannot see through them. The same situation persists in the universe until the universe is 380,000 years old, when the temperature, having fallen with expansion, allows electrons to (re)combine with atomic nuclei. From that point onwards, photons no longer interact with matter and live a separate history. The cosmological microwave background observed today refers to this “last scattering surface” that reflects the physiognomy of the universe just before the end of the interaction of photons of light with matter.

8.4. Cancer: Water, Feminine, Cardinal. The seeds of the world.

[From 380,000 years to 100 million years].

Traditionally, Cancer corresponds to the “depths of the Waters”, the embryogenic medium in which the seeds of the manifested world were deposited (p.129). For the ancient Greeks, it was one of the two gates of Heaven, the one at the summer solstice—the gate of men—through which souls descended from heaven to earth and where the wind of generation blew.

The sign of Cancer corresponds to the founding matrix, home and family. It symbolizes the roots and the fundamental base from which to build a concrete basis of operation in a feeling of emotional security. It is a protective process that envelops the first outlines of new forms. This archetypal image of Cancer is echoed in the hatching and growth phase of the primordial seeds of the planets, stars and galaxies. The attenuation of matter/light friction, allowing over-dense regions to develop under the effect of gravity, reflects the pause in the ardent extension of the mind that precedes the summer solstice. The Day-Force has reached its maximum intensity. It must slowly let itself be superseded by the matriarchal power of the Night-Force. There must be repolarization:

All that is needed to become a lens able to focus divinity is to become consciously what one inherently is, and to be it with clarity, in beauty and in truth. A lens to focus life. (p. 86)

The physical universe expresses this conversion in its own way, through the gravitational “focuses” around which new worlds will be organized.

Terms specific to the fourth sign, such as “star nurseries” and “stellar deliveries”, are widely used by cosmologists to describe the births of the universe’s first structures. Cancer refers not only to birth but also to the “end of things”, which is in fact mostly associated with the fourth house of an astrological chart (foundations, psychological basis). Unlike the end of the zodiacal cycle, symbolized by Pisces—or the 12th house—this is a total end, an end without subsequent beginning. It is, writes Rudhyar, the consequence of defeat in the Piscean encountering with the ghosts and shadows of the cycle which ends:

Then the new cycle is not a real rebirth but a descent into the abyss of final and total disintegration. He has missed the crucial moment of transformation, and he descends progressively through the first, second, and third houses [Aries, Taurus, Gemini] to reach bottom, the ultimate end, in the fourth house [Cancer]. (pp. 141-2)

From a cosmological point of view, we can see reflections of this final disintegration in those “theoretical” universes, which, lacking the “right” physics constants to hatch the seeds of galaxies, sink indefinitely into eternal absolute cold. This disintegration, like the one we shall be evoking later in Capricorn, seems to echo the apocatastasis symbolism of the Platonic Great Year.  It is in these two signs that, according to Pythagorean and Stoic traditions, the apocatastasis or renewal of the world must take place.

8.5. Leo: Fire, Masculine, Fixed. Flashes of light.

[From 10⁸ (100 million) years to 10¹³ (ten thousand billion) years]

This sign relates to the creative release of inner vitality of being. Individuality develops and expresses itself as play, performance and romance. In Leo, light shines with the radiant majesty of a form that takes center stage.

The symbolism of Leo can be seen in the phase of stellar nucleosynthesis that begins at around a million years old. Inhomogeneities of invisible dark matter act as cradles for inhomogeneities of “ordinary” baryonic matter, helping them to amplify by gravitational attraction. Gradually, the gas clouds condense to form galaxies. The contraction of matter causes a rise in temperature, triggering a thermonuclear fusion process at the center of the protostars, releasing light and energy outwards.

Leo symbolizes the creative liberation of the ego built in the cradle of Cancer. In all fields, its creative power expresses itself through emotions in which the ego makes its mark. In the stars, the antagonism between thermal pressure and gravitation creates the heavy elements necessary for life, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus. These have been produced by successive generations of stars, which, as they die, scatter these biological precursors across space.

The phase associated with Leo, known as “stellar”, prepares the way for the emergence of conscious beings. According to Avi Loeb (p.7), it will continue until 10¹³ years, or 1000 times the current age of the universe.

8.6. Virgo: Earth, Feminine, Mutable. The paths of perfection.

[From 10 billion years to 10 thousand billion (10¹³) years][i]

The Virgin reflects Sophia, God’s inner femininity. Emanated Wisdom penetrates matter and enlivens it. This sign represents a transitional stage where the creative expression of the ego is enhanced and purified. The creative fire of Leo, which has spread in swirling movements from the center, becomes aware of the surrounding space. The junction between the two signs is traditionally associated with the symbol of the Sphinx. At this point, “Energy becomes substance. The power in the Lion’s loins becomes reason and discrimination in the Virgin’s head” (Ru, p. 72). Self-criticism, introspection and discriminating awareness lead to the purest and most accurate expression. Techniques for improvement and efficiency must be developed to achieve maximum results with minimum effort.

The terrestrial biosphere is a good illustration of this quest for perfection, which developed on at least one of the planets in the universe as a result of the “friction” between matter and light. This mechanism, called photosynthesis, enabled the creation of organic molecules from carbon dioxide. It provided all the organic compounds and most of the energy needed for life. This living phenomenon, which appeared at least 3.7 billion years ago, will become, as previously mentioned by Avi Loeb, increasingly common in the universe and continue for almost the entire stellar era, i.e., around 10¹³ years.

The symbolism of Virgo is evident in this growth phase of a biosphere that develops and synthesizes forms increasingly adapted to the environment. Through countless plant and animal lineages, natural selection tirelessly improves, rejects, and restarts its task of purifying carbon-based life forms.

8.7. Libra: Air, Masculine, Cardinal. The emergence of consciousness.

[From 13.8 billion years to 10 thousand billion (10¹³) years]

Libra marks the beginning of the second hemicycle of the zodiac, giving it an analogous relationship with the Full Moon phase of the soli-lunar cycle. The symbolic “flowering” at the culmination of the cycle corresponds to the emergence of reflective consciousness, i.e., consciousness looking back on itself. The ego becomes an object for itself. It becomes aware of the non-ego and seeks balance, equity and harmony with other “egos”. Like the opposite sign of Aries, Libra initiates a new dynamic. It creates a new space of conscious information that reflects its adjustment to the outside world.

In the cosmological narrative, consciousness, which appeared with Homo Sapiens around 100,000 years ago, has long been considered an epiphenomenon. Today, it is the subject of several scientific models, one of the most promising of which links it to the mysterious “wave function reduction” of quantum physics. Contrary to the majority interpretation, which sees it as a probabilistic process, Penrose believes that the quantum state of a particle is a reality, as is its reduction, hence the name “objective reduction”, which, moreover, is triggered by gravity. In its “un-orchestrated” form, this process could give rise to a proto-consciousness at work in all matter, even inert matter, and would verge on reflexivity in the development of the biosphere. Penrose does not claim to explain the entirety of human consciousness. At the very least, Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) in the microtubules of the human brain could accompany the phenomenon of self-consciousness.

Just as in the opposite phase of cosmic inflation, marked by the exponential creation of space from the quantum vacuum, the emergence of consciousness, too, is intuitively associated with a certain “space”. Although not accessible to physics as we know it today, the historical emergence of this psychic reality can be read through its enormous acceleration on biological, cultural, and technological levels. Leroi-Gourhan has shown how evolutionary curves, at first extremely flat, gradually accelerate and then vigorously accelerate at the very moment when the growth in volume of the human brain comes to a plateau. It is as if biological evolution, having reached the limit of its evolutionary possibilities, were continuing to escalate through the medium of information.

It is worth noting that in both phases, gravity seems to play a primordial role. Its detachment from the unified force initiated cosmic inflation. And, at the stellar stage, it was gravity which, on the earth’s surface, caused the human species to evolve toward bipedalism and standing, the first step toward the reflexive consciousness. The importance of this force is reflected in alternative models of these two phases of the universe. It triggered the “Big Wow” and also, 13.8 billion years later, the “Bings”, or moments of experiential awareness, in the brain of Homo Sapiens.

8.8. Scorpio: Water, Feminine, Fixed. Metamorphosis and regeneration.

[From one hundred thousand billion (10¹⁴) to 10¹⁰⁰ years]

Scorpio symbolizes confrontation with the dark forces that impede the evolutionary process. It is about penetrating the depths of inner darkness and striving to understand it. We must turn away from the stability of a life embedded in form and completely renew our personality. The need to unite with others arises with a view to merging the energies that will enrich the social fabric and generate a civilization.

Scorpio’s thirst for regeneration will manifest itself in the conscious species that populate the universe’s distant future, particularly when the “Stelliferous Era” is succeeded by the “Degenerate Era”. The particular constraints of this phase led physicist Freeman Dyson to hypothesize in 1979 that life and consciousness would be determined not by the nature of the substrate matter, but by its structure. In the post-material environments of an indefinitely expanding universe becoming extremely cold, life could persist on substrates other than those based on carbon. In 1986, physicist Frank Tipler made the same kind of hypothesis for a contracting universe getting hotter and hotter.

So, in the “Degenerate Era”, the stars will burn out and cease to shine. The universe will become inexorably darker. Planets will detach from stars everywhere, and stars will escape from galaxies. Strictly speaking, there will no longer be stars from this or that galaxy, but a universal community of stars. This phase analogously overlaps with Scorpio, where Rudhyar says that

the desire to be a separate individual is being overwhelmed with dramatic intensity by the need to be more than oneself; by the urge to flow into others, as little streams merge into great rivers and rivers into the sea. (p. 81)

What’s more, the collapse of stars into black holes and the possible disintegration of the proton into lighter particles will challenge sentient beings to metamorphose and regenerate. If the proton turns out to be a stable particle, matter will in any case be swallowed up by black holes. As for the latter, they would disappear in the course of a long evaporation, estimated at 10¹⁰⁰ years for the largest. Ultimately, whatever the mechanisms by which matter disappears, all that would remain in the distant future of the universe would be electrons, their positron antiparticles, neutrinos, and photons. This total transmutation of the universe reflects Scorpio’s necessary task of abandoning a denser form of energy to liberate a subtler one.

8.9. Sagittarius: Fire, Masculine, Mutable. Expanding consciousness.

(From 10¹⁰⁰ years to the disappearance of time)

The mythological creature of the centaur symbolizes the expansion of consciousness. Sagittarius is always on the lookout for new fields of activity, likely to involve the conquest of new environments near and far. The aim is to triumph over the constant deterioration of natural energies and to liberate the light of thought. Expansion also extends to big ideas. It is the quest for eternal values and the absolute.  It is the deployment of distant connections that will serve as the “nervous system” of the social organism or, on a more abstract level, the establishment of a system of laws and regulations that will enable the complex organism of society—the life of a city or nation—to function satisfactorily.

If conscious life persists in the distant future of the universe, it will have adapted its metabolism to the post-material environment. The symbolism of Sagittarius is reflected here, in its search for vital extension in a universe stretched over considerable distances. Life may have settled on the last remaining structures, such as positronium atoms. These structures are formed by the electromagnetic attraction between electrons (-) and their antiparticles, positrons (+).

Mediated by almost completely cold photons of incommensurable wavelengths, these structures are fundamentally unstable. Indeed, the constituent particles, after orbiting for a very long time around their common center of mass, will eventually spiral toward each other toward their final annihilation. This scenario, favored by the infinite range of the electromagnetic force, is, however, highly unlikely due to the exponential expansion that could, in certain extreme scenarios, rip space apart.

Dyson’s seminal 1979 paper (already cited) concluded that life could go on forever, in a “normal” expanding universe using a limited energy budget. Intelligent species in the distant future could maintain communication by striving to eliminate “cosmological horizons”, i.e., by making each region of the cosmos connect. This was already a considerable challenge. But what about the challenge posed by an exponential expansion of space? Yet we must not forget that this phase of the universe is associated with the mythical creature of the Centaur, which points its arrows toward the heavens at a 45° angle, symbolizing maximum mobilization of energies. The horse half of the Centaur is “power”, the man half of the Centaur is “he who uses power”. Sagittarius must use power for constructive purposes. He must transform the heritage of the past into an intuition for the future.

Unlike science fiction, science relies on the laws of physics known today to cast its models for the distant future of the universe.  Some cosmologists reflect Sagittarius’ enthusiasm by not ruling out the possibility of global action by sentient beings on the universe as a whole. Like Sagittarius, they could compress natural energy—whatever its origin (dark energy, vacuum energy, cosmological constant) so that the universe could release the light of thought. The universe of the remote future would then go through what Rudhyar calls the test of meaning:

When, at a later stage of his growth, man has faced the tests of mutuality and responsibility, the integrative power of thought gives birth to a new phase of intelligence, to “meaning”. Meaning is an expression of the sense of mutuality when confronted with the solution of problems and conflicts caused by the assuming and the discharge of responsibility. (p.165)

On the cosmological level, the fate of the universe hangs on the behavior of the inherently unstable structures that are positronium atoms. Will they survive indefinitely as atoms, braving the dark energy that rips their constituent particles apart or allow themselves to be annihilated by electromagnetic attraction? The latter case would lead to a universe totally devoid of matter, bathed in eternal light. Physical time no longer has any meaning in this environment, where photons know no time and so, are never bored as Penrose says. The zodiac reflects this fading of time as the solstices approach. The Sagittarius moment is the prelude to Christmas. As the snow,

it absorbs all littleness into the vast womb of silence from which the new birth of the Day-force will emerge. The mind that binds all life into patterns of cosmic relationships has become a “mother of the Living God.” The Sagittarian has all the heroisms, the self-abnegation and the loving tyranny of mothers. He closes an era and opens another. He is pregnant with divinity. (p. 92)

8.10. Capricorn: Earth, Feminine, Cardinal. The gateway to time.

The winter solstice is the longest night of the year. Traditionally, this pause was called the “Gate of the Gods”. It allowed disembodied souls to return to the creative principle. Capricorn symbolizes destruction and, at the same time, the regeneration of the world through a return to its original state. It represents the conquest of summits and the achievement of a full realization of participation in the social or universal as a whole. Fierce ambition and relentless perseverance lead to self-denial and the quest for serenity. Capricorn then

accesses the Being perceived in its supreme emptiness. Relieved in turn of loads and overloads, it reaches the threshold of absolute emptiness where nothingness, having destroyed and reabsorbed everything, lets its power burst forth. (p.99)

More concretely, Capricorn embodies law, boundaries and the power to create a permanent, stable basis for society. It is the vast organism of the state, under whose control personalities, tribal groups and small nations ultimately disappear. The institution, the state, and public authority are oriented toward achievement, firmly established by common consensus. Society functions within stable, accountable structures that combine rigorous control with efficient management.

We could say that the very distant future of the universe reflects this sign, as well as its associated planet, Saturn, which, as Brassens sang, “rules the kingdom of time”. Physical time disappears, whatever the model. Let us take in succession the example of a contracting universe, then that of an accelerating expanding universe, which corresponds to current observations.

In the unlikely hypothesis of a re-contraction, time will disappear with the extreme temperatures that will prevail as we approach the final singularity: we return to Planck’s conditions of the very “beginning” where particle masses are negligible compared to ambient energy. Frank Tipler’s extreme “Omega Point” hypothesis particularly reflects the 10th sign. It is a much-maligned model but not because of its perfectly scientific approach and the calculations recognized by its peers. The reason is the author’s philosophical stance, which, starting from an atheistic position, eventually evolved to claim that his model “proved” the Christian myth. Tipler describes the approach to the final singularity as follows: the intelligent species that populate the universe will have to adapt to the now highly chaotic environment by using the energy of the gravitational field to process the information that will have to be encoded on elementary particles. The figure of Capricorn can be recognized in the total control of energy sources that will have to be exercised as the “Omega Point” approaches. The latter ultimately becomes an intelligent being, not only omnipresent but also omnipotent. To cope with this extremely chaotic universe, intelligence will also have to study it, and as it becomes an increasingly important part of the universe itself, it will have to study itself, thus approaching omniscience. As the final state approaches, the properties of omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence will come together. Beyond the author’s “concordant” allusions, this model reflects the figure of Capricorn, insofar as the latter represents the “hidden God” present in most religions and mythical stories, who periodically manifests himself through creation or emanation.

The exponentially expanding universe that corresponds to current observations will also see time vanish. The reason for this is that matter will have disappeared, swallowed up by black holes that, in turn, will eventually evaporate. And yet, without a particle of matter, there can be no clock, and without a clock, time is no longer defined.[ii] Here, the universe, ever more diluted and ethereal as it approaches the immaterial zone, recalls the figure of Capricorn or Senex, emaciated by the losses and deprivations that force it to constantly surpass itself in order to reach ultimate emptiness.

Is this ultimate emptiness a reflection of the apocatastasis or renewal of the world of the Platonic Great Year?  Roger Penrose’s Conforming Cyclic Cosmology (CCC) model illustrates this when the entire universe is reset. Not only time but also space vanishes, since these two quantities are linked in space-time. The universe “forgets” its size. And so, the massively expanded universe of the very distant future is mathematically no different from its beginning. By re-concentrating space and “conformal scaling” (preserving angles, not distances), it is possible to recover a universe equivalent to the one described just after inflation. Equipped with powerful gravitational and electromagnetic energies, the universe is able to cross the timeless connection zone and (re)begin a new cycle, which Penrose calls an “eon”.

8.11. Aquarius: Air, Masculine, Fixed. Creative breath.

Aquarius corresponds to the creative breath of the universal soul, which emanates from the void of the Absolute. It represents the essence of form falling into the waters of pre-cosmic substance. Thus, Aquarius’ mental genius expresses itself in the traits of the original innovator and the need to experiment with new modes of relationships and associations. Unlike the opposite phase of Leo, it is not individual “stars” that create, but the universal whole. The whole creates through the individual, who fulfils his or her function in the economy of the whole. On a metaphysical level, “mental activity” refers to formulas of being, systems or “models” of organization that will become the new structural foundations of the universe.

Cosmology reflects these characteristics in questions about the status of the laws and constants of physics, particularly in the large dimensionless numbers around 10⁴⁰ and 10⁸⁰. Indeed, it has been proposed that laws and/or constants might change during the eventual rebounds of a contracting universe. These hypotheses evoke the renewal and transformative ideal of Aquarius, insofar as it corresponds to the new impulses of the spirit, activated in the depths of society to invite it to change.

At the heart of the fourth quadrant of the zodiac, the sign of Aquarius is hard to see through the labyrinth of theories and experiments that strive to explain the behavior of the universe in these timeless realms of the distant future and the hypothetical pre-Big Bang phase. This “Fourth”, which “would not come”, reflects the difficult transition from 3 to 4 so dear to Jung, Pauli and Marie-Louise von Franz. Theories aimed at unifying the two currently incompatible kingdoms of physics and the inability to account for the energy content of the universe bear witness to the traditional philosophical difficulty of creating the multiple from the One.

The opposite quadrant, beginning at the summer solstice, saw the triumph of the individualizing Day-Force. This was reflected in the cosmological phase of stellar nucleosynthesis at the local star level. The creation of heavy elements within the stars reflected the creative and procreative power of Leo, liberated by the personality that had been formed and established in the home of Cancer. In Aquarius, however, it is the whole that creates, as it is the unifying, collectivizing, and in-gathering Night-Force that triumphs.

Aquarius creates through the constructive development of the state and civilization established in Capricorn by its particular inventions and social improvements. Rudhyar aptly describes the difficulty of the Aquarian individual, whose “personalizing” Day-Force energy is still very weak and barely able to function. It operates intermittently at best and often simply as a reaction against other personalities in a social situation. Just as the Leo person

makes big social gestures in order to hide his deeply hidden sense of social insecurity or his ‘inferiority complex,’ likewise the Aquarian makes big personal gestures in order to hide his usually unacknowledged sense of personal insecurity and his fear of any strong personality. (p.104)

Thus, by playing on the polarity of the solstitial signs, we can deduce the nature of the antagonistic forces in the Aquarius phase from the inverted mirror of the antagonistic forces in the Leo phase. In the latter, stellar nucleosynthesis is a local event that occurs during star formation, following the gravitational collapse of a gas cloud. The collapse is accompanied by heating that triggers the nuclear fusion of hydrogen. At the star’s local level, nuclear forces counterbalance—for a stable star—the effect of gravity. In Aquarius, we might therefore expect a force acting at the global level that opposes attractive gravity. This could be the strange force that has been accelerating the expansion of the universe for nearly 6 billion years. It has been identified as a cosmological constant or dark energy. In contrast to the explosion of energy that makes the stars shine in the Fire sign phase of Leo, the explosion in the Air sign phase of Aquarius is more analogous to a “cosmic” thought or to a universal field of proto-consciousness.

Proto-consciousness explosion? The Penrose/Hameroff thesis on the existence of proto-consciousness events corresponding to moments of quantum state reduction comes to mind.  These events are supposed to exist at several levels, from the geometric curvatures of space-time at Planck scale to the orchestrated forms of Homo-Sapiens via the intermediate forms constituted by elementary particles and the phenomena of terrestrial biological evolution. Could it be that, in this pre-material phase associated with Aquarius, centrifugal dark energy produces, through confrontation with attractive gravity, the information necessary for the lives and psyches to be incarnated in the multiverse to be?  Similarly, we might wonder about the link with dark matter, whose presence in the stellar phase associated with Leo seems to be a stabilizing function in the structuring of the universe into stars and galaxies.

Whether it is made up of exotic particles or the addition of new fields (which is quantically equivalent), dark matter seems to play the same role locally as dark energy does globally. By playing the role of foundations, of nurseries conducive to the birth of new galaxies, dark matter produces, or at least facilitates, the emergence of life and consciousness on future planets. We could perhaps conceive of these two “matter-energy” forces coming together in a dialectical movement of a quintessential field. Organizer of the universe, this field would alternately take the form of “matter” or “energy”, depending on the phase of the universe under consideration, and would be the intermediary element between the One and the Many, corresponding here to the two solstitial signs.

8.12. Pisces: Water, Feminine, Mutable. The latent state of reality and possible worlds.

The sign of Pisces corresponds to the dissolution of all structures and limitations, and the oblivion of ancient civilizations and organized religions. As Rudhyar writes,

Here it is the “social” man who must learn to give up his comfortable, or even his tragic, reliance upon the structure of society. He must learn to stand alone and to rely only upon his own inner Voice. He must be willing to “close accounts” and face the unknown with simple faith; to re-enter the womb of nature, leaving behind the beautiful mirages of the Aquarian civilized life and bracing himself for life in the wilderness of some greater realm, for long voyages to a new world. (p. 108)

From the point of view of contemporary scientific cosmology, the archetypal figure of Pisces transpires in this latent component of the universe, insensitive to dilation and endowed with enormous energy. It is the fundamental state of quantum fields, inhabited by pairs of virtual particles that appear and then annihilate within a codified timeframe according to the time-energy relationship of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Its underlying energy has been estimated at around 10¹¹³ joules per cubic meter. While some of its effects have been experimentally observed, the link between its repulsive effect and the accelerating expansion of the universe has not been established. Indeed, the value of this repulsive energy calculated by reference to the upper limit of the cosmological constant gives 10^-9 joules per cubic meter, a value that is far too small in a ratio of 10¹²²!

The void is the totality of all possible worlds, where all kinds of particles interact: those that transmit electromagnetic forces and signals, as well as those that fluctuate, emerging stealthily like fish from the surface of an ocean, only to plunge right back in. This state at the intersection of being and non-being reflects Pisces, characterized by its total openness to the influxes of the unconscious. It is a “place of transition, where the end of a journey and the dawn of a new beginning take turns.” (p.114)

Here, the vacuum is no longer the smooth space-time deformed by energy and matter. It is a foam of tiny particles in permanent agitation. This substance that links everything and from which everything emerges is modelled by the—rudimentary—physical concept of information, evoking for some the “universal consciousness” and for others the “collective unconscious”. For Penrose and Hameroff, this foam structured by the Planck length (10^-35 meters) could be the source of the proto-consciousness events that emerged in the protein filaments of the biosphere’s living cells during the phase associated to Virgo, opposite to that of Pisces.

The continuous depths of this quantum substance is constantly levelled by fluctuations that erase the slightest irregularity in a time on the order of Planck’s time. This “effacement” evokes the essential task of the sign of Pisces, which consists in overcoming the harmful attachment to memories of suffering and frustration accumulated in the unconscious:

He must learn to un-learn and to give up even his set ideals and his possessions. He must learn even, as mystics do, to pierce through the wondrous sphere of the “glory of God” and to search, undaunted, through the darkness of human consciousness for the “poverty of God,” that hidden state where there is silence and nothing, yet whence all things that have form and name emanate in the stillness of the supreme Mystery. (pp.108-109)

Conclusion

The creation of science came at the price of the disappearance of the soul of the world, which acted as a bridge between the sensible and the intelligible. This separation lasted for several centuries, until the quantum revolution at the beginning of the 20th century completely overturned it. And it was the logical paradoxes of the new quantum theory that led to the need to consider several levels of reality. Today, they enable a dialogue of equals between the various disciplines—science, art, religion, metaphysics. In a way, it is a return of the soul of the world, enabling a new unity of culture without confusion of planes.

The reflections of the zodiac in the contemporary cosmological narrative bear witness to the persistence of this soul of the world as a universal binding force. In the same way that the first inventors of quantum physics, bewildered by a ground that was slipping away beneath their feet, went looking to Eastern philosophies for ways of thinking that could help them reflect, contemporary cosmologists could find in the zodiac grid ideas for tackling new enigmas. Combining synchronic and diachronic perspective, the zodiac is a conservatory of imaginative logic, perpetuating a cosmological reading that incorporates both the idea of creation and that of the end—a pessimistic end in a “heat death” or a hopeful end in an “omega point”. We can read in it what may happen at the extremes, either as “beginning-ends” or “end-beginnings”, or as unfoldings of transitional processes harmonized by two polar forces. Last but not least, the zodiac’s rich play of angular aspects (squares, oppositions, etc.) enables us to point out unprecedented relationships between cosmological events.

Unfortunately, the symbol continues to suffer from a lack of interest in its usefulness and effectiveness in analysis and reflection. Although sidelined and evanescent, the soul of the world nonetheless continues to attempt, through its power of connection and synthesis, to ensure the differential unity of levels of reality. Distinguishing between these levels is crucial today, as is valuing each of them with the same degree of dignity. This is crucial to avoid confusion in science’s dialogue with religious and spiritual traditions. It is crucial if the possibility of meaning is to emerge.

[i] This article assumes the existence of only one planet capable of producing life and consciousness. However, it is quite possible (but as yet unobserved) that other biospheres have already developed or will develop in the universe.

[ii] Between energy and matter: E = mc² (c = constant) and between energy and frequency: E = h f (h = constant). So hf = mc², hence f = (c² / h) m. If m = 0, f = 0. Without frequency, no clock, no possibility of defining a time scale and therefore no space.

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Religion, Science, Space, Universe