As many of you know, I am forever striving to produce educational material that challenges us to raise the bar in astrological consultation work. In a continuation of my previous newsletter on Spiritual Astrology, I’d like to explore with you how the birth of psychology arose during the same period as modern astrology – and this is not by coincidence. I believe the two streams evolved together, as I explore below, and it is only because of western cultures’ historical persecution of our profession that has prevented this idea from being fully explored until relatively recently.
In my research trips to Psychosynthesis founder Roberto Assagioli’s archive in Florence in recent years, it started to dawn on me that the two people who knew Sigmund Freud and who took psychology beyond Freud’s reductionist vision, that is Carl Jung and Roberto Assagioli, were not into astrology in a small way. They were full on astrologists.
This is in light of Maggie Hyde’s great work on Jung and the more recent Liz Green scholarship on Jung’s use of astrology. The question I raise then is this: has astrology itself played an invisible role in the birth and shaping of a meaning orientated psychology in the 20th Century?
During my first visit in 2012, I was one of a few privileged people to enter Assagioli’s archive for the first time. Upon reaching his study, our guide directed me personally to an entire wall of box files saying “this will interest you.” Upon each box was scrawled “Spiritual Astrology in English” in Assagioli’s own handwriting. I was astounded! Here was direct evidence that the man who created the first vision of a spiritual psychology in the 20th Century, was not just into astrology as a passing interest. Here was an entire room, full of hand-drawn charts in archive boxes, charts that must have taken an hour or two to create each time. I went through hundreds of them: Sigmund Freud, Mohandas Ghandi, the great spiritual teachers of the 20th Century. He created these charts by hand and was studying them. As any astrologer who became such before the advent of computers can testify – it takes time and at least a basic understanding of astronomy to draw up a birth chart, and Assagioli had taken the time to learn how to do this.
Assagioli studied with all the major psychiatrists of the time: Claparède and Flournoy in Geneva; Kraepelin and Jones in Munich; Bleuler and Jung at the Burghölzli in Zurich, but you must remember that the subject of psychiatry was a fringe area in the early 20th century and so these great minds were already out on a limb. And then to study astrology! Well, that’s a new low is it not, and best kept secret?
It makes me think of Stan Grof’s autobiography, When the Impossible Happens, in which it is much easier for him to confess his lifelong use of psychedelic drug at sacred sites, to inspire his visions, and in therapy too, than it is to admit his interest in astrology. You could be tripping your nuts off at the Great Pyramids of Giza and write about it as a legitimate academic psychologist, but to talk about astrology would ruin your credibility and most likely you career. That is what we are dealing with here.
So, you can see that astrology has been a secret influence on many important people in a big way. People who were inspired with soul visions of psychology, were using the astrological archetypes and cycles of meaning revealed in the astrological symbolism, to form a ballast for their vision of spiritual psychology. This is something not discussed in the world at large.
Assagioli had a beautiful wooden desk that still sits in the same location in his home in Florence that has become the archive. And in the centre of that desk is a locked drawer. I asked our guide about the locked drawer and what was in it to which she replied “oh, the drawer is stilled locked. It has never been opened.” I was astounded, again. In the thirty-nine years since Assagioli’s death, no one had thought to open the draw! In the years since that trip, my friend and colleague Keith Hackwood, who I run the Psychosynthesis Coaching Training course with, has become a member of staff at the archive and because of this privileged position was allowed into the room and shown what was hiding away in the locked drawer all these years. Inside was a green leather journal, a gift to Roberto Assagioli from, none-other-than, Alan Leo. And inside was a full natal chart reading written by Alan Leo for Assagioli when he was aged twenty-four. An entire green ledger of Leo’s musings about Assagioli’s soul growth and his development throughout life, and Assagioli would sit and look at this, meditate on it every few months, and every year of his life he would re-read it. Alan Leo, thick from the theosophical fog of London and its magical astrological scene, reached out to this young Italian doctor and inspiring him. This is the invisible network of astrology’s influence. Not public, no big names, but of central enough importance to lock in the centre drawer of your desk and look at it all the time and base the inner sense of the direction of your life on it.
So, just because astrology runs counter to consensus thinking, let us not be fooled into thinking it is insignificant.
Alan Leo, of course, tragically and somewhat ironically, as shown recently in the excellent book The Modern Astrologers, by Kim Farnell, was prosecuted for fortune telling. This was a man who had gone out on a limb to talk to people on the symbolism of their true nature, of their psychology and the true nature of their spirituality. His family realised the impact the trial had on him and took him to Cornwall soon after so he could recoup his strength and settle his agitated mind. But he couldn’t break out of the malaise that the injustice had awakened in him, and he spent the entire vacation writing a frenzied series of letters trying to justify his innocence. He could not let go of it and he died of an aneurism soon after.
It’s quite sickening that a man who took the risk of speaking about psychological and spiritual astrology was singled out as a fortune teller and paid with his life. In America there are still laws that have seen many astrologers having to apply for an “entertainment” type licence. Astrology cannot be taken seriously; it has to be classified as entertainment for the safety of the public. “Astrology is light entertainment folks!” We can have a bit of a laugh together, we can laugh about Aries being, you know, self-dominated and Pisces being lost souls but anything more than that? Well, I put it to you, there is an invisible history running through the heart of the 20th Century that says differently.
Shortly after the publication of his seminal book The Astrology of Personality in 1936, Dane Rudhyar arrived in Florence on the way to meet his wife in India, and Rudhyar and Assagioli studied together in Assagioli’s villa and office. Tragically, that home would be burned to the ground by Mussolini and his black shirts only four years later when psychosynthesis was doomed a pacifist organisation and violently shut down.
The impact of the Second World War on Assagioli was stark. He was imprisoned in solitary confinement and later went on the run in the mountains of northern Italy with his wife and child. It was tuberculous of the bone that the cold exposure from those years induced in the young boy, that claimed his life a few years later. The losses were significant.
I very much believe that Rudhyar remained in correspondence with Assagioli. When I was last in the archive in September 2023, I found Christmas letters from Rudhyar, from California; these little send-out newsletters which tell of the time they are having and what has occurred since last they wrote, printed and mailed to Assagioli in Florence in 1965. So, it’s likely they remained in close contact the whole time and there would have been more visits. There is clear evidence of them studying together, looking at charts together, looking at the charts of great artists and visionaries. They likely had a huge impact on each other. Assagioli’s visions of psychosynthesis and, of course, the theosophy that inspired both Alan Leo and Assagioli to some extent, had a massive influence on Rudhyar and his vision of astrology.
Roberto Assagioli encapsulated his vision of spiritual psychology in the form of an egg, where a radiant star of spiritual power shines down into the authentic personal self. The star is our Sun and the personal self is like the Earth which revolves around the Sun to form the ecliptic. In a little-known pamphlet from 1971 called The Lunar and Planetary Nodes, Rudhyar made clear his perception of the significance of the ecliptic because nodes are, of course, formed by planets crossing the ecliptic, hence emphasising the importance of the nodes. The ecliptic, the journey of the Earth around the Sun is the symbol of the personal self, Earth, travelling around the great radiance of the spiritual Sun. It is the ultimate symbol of psychospiritual growth.
The Self is an ontological Reality, a Being; and is on its own level, a stable Centre of Life from which it radiates energies. The personal self, the self-conscious “I,” is a projection or reflection of the Self into the normal human level.
So, the very essence of astrology, embedded in its DNA in the ecliptic, along the passage of which you find the twelve signs of the Zodiac, is embedded with psychological and spiritual meaning.
If you look at Assagioli’s egg diagram, you can see that the same Sun, personalised at a given moment by the Earth, that is you symbolically, becomes a map of the human energy field, the aura of psychic potential that you are, as you shine the light of your essence, your miniature Sun, into the world. This is the model of spiritual psychology laid down in the middle of the 20th Century by this underground lineage, where three streams, Theosophy, early psychology and astrology, merge through Dane Rudhyar, Roberto Assagioli and Carl Jung.
When Rudhyar visited Assagioli in 1936 he had already read the entirety of Carl Jung up until that point. Rudhyar, the founder of modern psychological or spiritual astrology, was completely immersed in Jung and spent a great deal of time in Florence with Assagioli. The two of them create a fusion of Jungian and Theosophical thought to become, through Assagioli, psychosynthesis, and through Rudhyar, this breakout vision of astrology that attempts to offer you a mirror for your psychological and spiritual growth.
On the basis of these trips to the archive, Keith and I have created a spiritual coaching training, designed for astrologers and other practitioners, who do not want to go through conventional therapy licencing but who do want the depth of therapeutic wisdom offered by two experienced therapists and supervisors. What we offer is a mentoring programme for those interested in this vision of psychological and spiritual growth, one that can be explicitly utilised alongside astrology.
The training is on-line, it does not require any in-person meetings, and it offers a mixture of visionary teaching on psychological models utilising the central map of the human psyche described in Psychosynthesis as integration. Along with the central teaching element, you will learn about the history of psychology and meet in small supervision and mentoring groups guided by a very experienced supervisor, to bring out your own innate psychological skills.
I would argue that if you are a sensitive empathic person, whatever form of astrology or other person-centred area you work in, such as yoga, massage, energy work etc, you will find yourself led into psychological territory, in a manner akin to a counsellor or a coach. It will just happen spontaneously because you are a good, kind, empathic person; you will not be able to help yourself. And because of that, I urge you to go in prepared, confident and aware, because it will hold you in good stead throughout your career as a person-centred practitioner. From my point of view, the name of the game is always healing and transformation, not astrology for its own sake.
My training program begins in September 2024:
A profound five module training in the theory, application and practice of Psychosynthesis for those in healing professions such as astrologers, body workers, energy workers etc. This coaching training creates a flexible model for how to coach, mentor and guide others.
Each Module is priced individually at $1800 and there are 5 modules in total.
With purchase of Module 1 and 3 you will receive the recorded content within 48 hours of payment.
MODULE 1
55 hours of high-quality video presentations of live classes given by Mark Jones. Major sections focus upon the foundations of western thought leading to Freud, and subsequent depth explorations of Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow & Carl Rogers.
Jung: The evolution of his work, the discovery of the collective unconscious, anima and animus, shadow, principle of individuation, spirit of the depths vs spirit of the time.
Maslow: the foundational principles of humanistic psychology, Carl Rogers: the foundation of the person centered approach. Contribution of Melanie Klein and the depressive position.
The next focus contains an extended introduction to Psychosynthesis itself including the assimilation of materials gleaned from multiple research visits to the archive of Roberto Assagioli in Florence. We consider how he formed a vision of a psychology that was explicitly spiritual from the very beginning of his thought process; an exploration of his famous map of consciousness, the Egg Diagram and of its key insight representing the human energy field. The I – Self axis reveals Assagioli’s profound vision of personal growth. Finally, an extended section covers the nature of the therapeutic relationship using Psychosynthesis and its energetic model of the human soul as the basis for understanding. We explore the nature of the Knowing Field that exists between coach and client and the emotional dynamic that underpins that in Emotional Field Theory and then the making of the self that can emerge from the relationship.
MODULE 2
Ongoing small group mentoring with Keith Hackwood. These groups are intended to provide the individual with opportunities to express their questions and growing understanding of Psychosynthesis, using the dynamics of personal growth directly as well as being an active witness in the process of others. The interaction with and support of the group becomes a crucial component in learning to be a skillful, effective coach.
MODULE 3
This Module starts with a live weekend titled Psychosynthesis in Time followed by 40 hours of highly curated video content pre-recorded with a dynamic visual balance between Mark as a speaker and the illustrated content.
Next in the sequence is the 12 part Principles of Healing: Establishing connection, CSI Healer, True Witnessing, Spiritual Emergence, Goals and Creativity, Crisis and Morals, Resistance, The Angel vs Resistance, The Song of Myself, In Search of Soul, The Paths, The Vale of Soul Making Parts 1 & 2, The Mammalian Loyalty Project, Child Rescue Dynamics, The Magnetism of the Family, Trauma as Loyalty, Working with Resistance, The Sea Wall, Stages of Change.
The True and False Self is then presented in 5 major sections; Spiritual Experience and Conscience, and The Idea of a Path Parts 1-3.
In Module 3 we also come together as a full group in live Q&A – the process that will become the mainstay of the course in module 5.
MODULE 4
Ongoing small group supervision and mentoring with Keith Hackwood. These groups give the individual a chance to express their questions and dynamics of personal growth directly as well as being an active witness in the process of others. The interaction with and support of the group becomes a crucial component of learning to be a coach.
MODULE 5 Group Process – here there are a series of opportunities to operate in a group setting with both Mark and Keith. We will use a combination of pre-selected texts prepared for you in order to encourage dialogue and open Q&A. When the course ends you will have the option to include a certification process.
If you have questions about my Psychosynthesis Coaching Training course then please contact me directly – [email protected]
“I really appreciate the support, guidance and wisdom that both of you provided throughout the duration of the course. Thank you for doing this – for holding space for transformation for all of us and being willing to be transformed by the experience yourselves. Soul and transpersonal realms have opened amazing doors for me so far and I’m grateful that this course was one of them.” D.S.
“Little did I realize how quickly and profoundly things would change for me, from the very first meeting to the last, layer upon layer, like a snake shedding skin it has outgrown. There is something about committing to Soul work which sets in motion what can only be described as a release of all that hinders or holds one in the past. I have deep and truly profound gratitude to both Keith and Mark” D.T.
“I don’t know of any other program like this that weaves together the various types of psychology, the depth psychology of Jung’s work, the spiritual vision of psychosynthesis, and concepts within astrology. The curriculum is truly unique, and Mark is an extremely gifted teacher at helping you to understand a variety of complex topics and synthesizing them with various world views, and teachings, and looking at it from different angles. Keith is also an excellent supervisor in the group process, and his guidance and feedback has helped make me a better coach. I highly recommend this program to anyone interested in spiritual psychology” L.M.
“Ten thousand thanks for all of this. I am so grateful for this experience.” A.M.