Most of the time, when I look at the picture of the week, I see right away the astrological archetype with which the image aligns.
My first instinct with this one was Saturn: the organization, the predictability, the safety of the grid-like pattern. But then I thought: No, Uranus: energy, electricity. Or Mercury: thousands of little connections all bringing energy to an undefined, in-between space.
All of these archetypes are true to the image in their own way but they don’t really get to the core of it for me. What is most striking about this photo, in my view, is the stark, bright, white light against the utter blackness: the striking oppositeness come together. Secondarily (or perhaps primarily, depending on the viewer), the grid pattern kind of couches or embraces a cross, which in the Christian tradition is the symbol of light penetrating dark.
But what is light penetrating dark in terms of astrology? I don’t think I can choose a single planet or sign to reflect that idea, for light and dark are such basic archetypal energies that undergird and run through all of life, through all the energies we carry within us: Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Sagittarius, Cancer — each of these and every other astrological energy carries its own brand of light and dark into embodiment, into the life of the person who carries that energy.
For instance, Venus is the goddess of love and beauty and, as such, represents merging relationship, sensuality, art and luscious enjoyment of life. But she can also be desperate and demanding, vain and superficial. These are two sides of the same coin, the light and the shadow of a single archetypal energy that lives in all of us.
There are others: Mercury’s quick wit, light laughter and adaptability is shadowed by detachment, fickleness and nit-picky-ness; Jupiter’s wisdom, perspective and generosity may be darkened by arrogance, excess and sloth.
When we accept, embody or live out only one side of an archetype, denying the other side’s potential within us, we run into trouble. This is the condition first identified by Sigmund Freud as projection and cast into mythic terms by Carl Jung as shadow.
Western astrologers have long identified shadow with the seventh house (the house of relationship), suggesting that we draw people to us who have the qualities we are not yet ready to accept in ourselves and integrate into our consciousness.
But we can experience shadow in any house of the horoscope, for example if we have a strong seventh house and little in its opposite house, the first, we may identify more completely with others than with ourselves, making the self into shadow material: fear of being alone, denial of one’s own worth, self-effacement or self-abnegation or self-mutilation, to go to the extreme. If our ninth house is dominant over the third, we may find ourselves in an ivory tower, alienated from community, and thus critical of people who have strong local connections and networks. And so forth.
This is all shadow material. Light penetrates shadow through the channel of consciousness, of becoming aware of where your shadows lie, where they’re sourced, how they’re triggered, how they grow.
Consciousness, in turn, is cultivated by self-reflection, self-honesty and ventures into the darkness, to discover and retrieve and reclaim what is there. It can be done, to some extent, on one’s own, but is more often effective with a faithful guide, a Virgil to one’s Dante or a Gandalf to one’s Frodo. Such guides can bring the wisdom, insight, faith, humbleness and even humor we need to believe in our own survival through the dark shadows of our own psyche. They can help us find our own light.
Image: Drake Guan
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