Astrological Planets vs. Jungian Personality Typology

The work of Swiss Psychiatrist C G Jung has often been associated with astrological thinking and much has been written about it, Some good, some not so good. What do you think? Do they have a connection, such as through Jung's idea of Synchronicity?
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iauiugu
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Astrological Planets vs. Jungian Personality Typology

Post by iauiugu »

I know I'm not the first or last to compare astrology and myers-briggs. As many have noted, myers-briggs work comes from jung's work, which itself comes in some part from alchemy, which comes from astrology. Additionally, all these systems of psyche use somewhat platonic categories, and so this inclination to find parallels seems pretty rational.

I've been disappointed with what I've found so far though, as most tend to focus on

12 sun signs (virgo, leo...) vs. the 16 personalities (intp, esfj...)
4 elements (fire, earth, water, air) vs. the 4 cognition types (thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition) vs the four humors (choleric, sanguine...)
whole natal horoscopes (conjuctions, aspects, sign influences...) vs. the 16 personalities

which is pretty limited, given both astrology and myers-briggs theories have a lot of other possible angles for cross-comparison.

I found the following parallels myself, but I'm curious how others see them. They're numbered as followed

1. Astrological Planetary Archetype
2. 8 letter code parallels
3. Cognitive Functions parallels

1. Uranus:
Originality, inventions, breaking from tradition, bohemian, freedom, creativity, forward-looking, originality, discovery, innovation, progressive, novelty, ingenuity, spark of intuition, quirkiness
2. Perception:
The state of taking in and perception information, of not converging on conscious or unconscious conclusions/judgment
Focused on exploring options, trying things out, preferring novelty over repetition, does not decide until necessary or exceptionally sure
May not grow sufficient life structure or criticality
3. Extroverted Intuition:
Perceives through abstract patterns built from immediate sensorial reception and memory – tastes, smells, sounds, visuals… -- to connect to subtle, emergent possibilities for altering or innovating the world around them. Enjoying being silly and playful without shame. Energizes others in its vision of future possibilities; feels a sense of oneness in the perceived unity of all things

1. Saturn
Discipline, responsibility, limitations, restriction, delay, tradition, convention, structure, order, past experience, boundaries, responsibilities, commitments, rules, regulation
2. Judgment
The state of formulating ideas, responses, minimizing extraneous stimulus from external and internal environment
Focused on what is known or proven, operate from set structures, editing themselves only when necessary or when exceptionally sure
May not grow sufficient open-mindedness or tolerance towards uncertainty
3. Introverted Sensing
Perceives the present through bodily sensations that are connected to the past, collecting an extensive range of learned facts and memory, can feel a sense of oneness with the past through tradition and ritual; prefers sticking to known structures and experiences

1. Jupiter
Exploring ideas, formulating ideology, ethical and moral values, benevolence, honor, tolerance, expansive, gratitude, bounty, good will, mercy, blind optimism
2. Introversion
The state of perceiving/reflecting or judging/modifying belief inwards
Prefers not to initiate, edits their expressions, leans on internal perceptions and memory, requires reflection time to grow, prefers a path of idealism
May not grow sufficiently assertive to test or manifest internal structures
3. Introverted Feeling
Strives for integrity and consistency in its ideals. Concerned with internal sense of right and wrong, and keeping consistent to these principles. Highly in tune with the emotional subtleties and essence of other people. Selective concerning when something is worth standing up for.

1. Mars
Energy, passion, determination, command, confidence, ambition, competition, courage, assertion, stamina, action, raw energy, forthright, impatient, forceful, impulsive
2. Extroversion
The state of perceiving/exploring or judging/directing the external environment
Prefers to keep active and honest with others and in activities, leans on external feedback, prefers a path of pragmatism
May not grow sufficiently reflective to question and improve external habits
3. Extroverted Thinking
Focuses on maximizing efficiency in the outside world, including solving problems or managing situations. It accepts flawed means if they still accomplish a goal, becoming impatient if no measurable results are made. Desires to build from and lean on structure and order; notices inconsistencies in logic and reality. Competitive and thrives on satisfaction from accomplishment.

1. Venus
Love, romance, emotional harmony, appreciation, attraction, arts, indulgence, possessions, sensuality, sentiments, pleasure in life, charm, taste, attachment, superficial
2. Feeling
Personal sentiment, personal concerns, compassion, tactful over truthful. Harmony-oriented, values-oriented.
3. Extroverted Feeling
Seeks optimal social relationships and interactions, recognizes how to bring social harmony; modifies behavior to conform to perceived and stated desires of others; desires opening up others.

1. Mercury
Communication, intellect, logic, thought expression, quick thinking, dexterity, perceptiveness, deconstruction, analysis, sorting, technical, intelligence, memory
2. Thinking
Impersonal results, technical, logical, precise, categorical, explicit understanding. Task-oriented, solution-oriented.
3. Introverted Thinking
Uses an internal system for analyzing and categorizing everything; takes concepts apart to understand underlying principals; presumes a logical order to the universe; finds the best words to express a concept with clarity and brevity.

1. Ceres*
Cultivation, nourishment, collective needs; Goddess of Common Man
Our connection to what we consume, the planet, products, icons
2. Sensation
Is in connection with their literal surroundings, prefer pleasurable and sensually engaging experiences; focus on sense impressions, comfort and luxury,
May not grow sufficient ‘big picture’ understanding outside of most direct concerns and experiences
3. Extroverted Sensation
Have detailed perception of literal present reality; good at sizing up situations and others; follows trends and embraces social conventions and norms, prefers taking experiential approaches to life, reading cues to maximize impact, living in the present moment

1. Pluto
Transformation, regeneration, rebirth, destruction, obsession, subversion, intensity, repression, obsessive power, individual truth
2. Intuition
Prefers abstraction over literalism, finding connections and relationships between concepts, categories, and systems
May not grow sufficiently grounded in real limitations or apply their capabilities
3. Introverted Intuition
Generates unique and complex insights that seem out of nowhere, but are developed through unconscious processes that work outside of conscious effort to converge on probabilities. Seeks the hidden essence of everything to deepen understanding, sometimes only for its own sake; may get lost in conspiracy, or completely transform behavior based on insights

* I haven't found a consensus on Ceres' archetype, but I pulled from some common themes among the little writing I found.

For those wondering, I'm currently gathering more interpretations, but I see the solar bodies not included above as

Neptune - Superego, Conscience, Religion/Spirituality, Faith, Purpose
Sun - Central Identity, Willpower, Ego
Moon - Id - Stream of consciousness, basic habits, ingrained reactions, expectations
Sedna - Subego - inherited vice, supreme chaos and suffering

which in essence parallels freud's take on the core aspects of personality

I don't think there's any simple read between these archetypes and a chart, but hopefully this can get some conversation going on how these systems may hold some important similarities

i've attached an image that shows what helped spawn these ideas -- placing the astrological bodies on the kabbalistic tree of life, as many researchers have placed them. i noticed certain recurring polarities and themes that aligned with this -- like popper's open, progress vs. closed, reactive societies matching the uranian-saturnian polarity, or the machiavellian question or rule by fear or love parallels the polarity between competitive, mertiocratic mars, and collaborative, idealistic jupiter

thanks for reading!
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Mersenne
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Re: Astrological Planets vs. Jungian Personality Typology

Post by Mersenne »

What a very interesting study!

I recommend that you read Jung's original accounts from his collected works. Derivative studies- including that of Myers/Briggs- always neglect much of the original. In particular, Jung postulated a fifth psychologcal function, the "transcendent function", which reconciled conscious and unconscious functions and energies.

Myers/Briggs accept the conventional interpretation that if, say, intuition is expressed, sensation is repressed. But I feel that the transcendent function suggests that conscious and unconscious functions can indeed be reconciled. I know people who are positive hedonists with remarkable intuition. How else could a person be a great chef, for instance?

Bear in mind, however, that Archetypes resist intellectual attempts to pin them down. You should embrace a certain amount of necessary ambiguity in your study- give the Archetypes wriggle room.

Reference: C.G. Jung (1916/1958) The Transcendent Function, Collected Works Vol. 8, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
See on this Forum:
Mersenne’s Astrological Statistics & Datasets
Mersenne’s Microcosm
Mersenne’s Transneptunians
iauiugu
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Re: Astrological Planets vs. Jungian Personality Typology

Post by iauiugu »

Thank you so much for your feedback! I've tried to cover everything that's been mentioned thoroughly but succinctly.

In terms of the Transcendent function -- I've admittedly been a poor reader of Jung's original work. i've only read his descriptions of personality 'elements' and functions, some of his writing on archetypes, tried to get into Man and His Symbols and his Reflections… -- none spoke to me much at the time i read them, but it's becoming undeniable that I should get back into it.

In terms of Myers-briggs -- contemporary research lacks a thorough account for many of Jung's ideas - archetypes, animus mundi, the importance of the unconscious - but I've found that, in terms of its focus, many ideas stand well on their own merit and development, if not as an option towards raising people's self-knowledge, then in its immediacy and accessibility

I don't find the work without faults, but I can't think of one that a serious researcher of myers-briggs models wouldn't agree with. I recently met with one, Dario Nardi, who has found EEG neocortex activity correlations to myers-briggs personality types and functions. extroverted intuiters often show random patterns and activity levels of an imaginative brainstormer; extroverted thinkers often show minimal, efficient activity of a mind in it to win it. incidentally, during my meeting with him, he cautioned me to not be too focused on the eight cognitive functions, and that there may be more to account for. at the time i didn't think to ask him if he has something specific in mind -- nor the confidence to admit that i was cross-analyzing myers-briggs and astrology. I didn't want to come off as another kid with big weird ideas for a field with an already-shaky reputation

In terms of the relationship between opposite functions, like intuition and sensation - From what I've read, it's not so much that intuition represses sensation, but that abstraction/impressions are generally more immediate, understandable, and preferred over concrete details and facts - dates, designs, smells, common sense... Or that the Abstract (intuitive) and the Concrete (sensory) are qualitative essences at the far ends of a spectrum of cognition, both being elemental opposites, binaries, complements, inversions, or poles, depending on one's level of love for boxes and simplicity.

It doesn't mean one necessarily represses their inferior functions (though they may), but rather that inferior functions are dependent on external feedback and learning to support them, otherwise they are typically less-developed than is expected by or acceptable to others. Meanwhile, dominant functions are relatively strong from pretty early in life, giving introverted, intuitive children that precocious, 'old soul' vibe as soon as they can form sentences, or the effectively bossy and controlling vibe to extroverted, thinking kids, even when people/kids may not fully grasp the extent of their strength or impact on the world or others.

In my case, I feel like I am a pretty introverted, abstraction-minded person (the blackest sheep of the extended family), and likewise i find remembering the concrete details of life difficult (and boring), and have a balance problem with sensual/carnal pleasures. but I also find great satisfaction in sculpting, meticulously shaping my internal perceptions and vision into a material (and figurative) form, working to find an effective edge between my strength and its complement, something key to affective art of all types.

In terms of planet archetype complexity -- I agree that archetypes can never really be pinned down, but I believe/find that they can be articulated within certain scopes or contexts that are relatively specific and illustrative of the cosmos's higher order, as is seen in the application of planetary archetypes within kabbala's the tree of life. a common assumption of the tree's mechanics is that any given entity can be analyzed as constituting a part of each archetype - the organ systems of an organism, parts of a society, stages of maturation, levels of consciousness. That they can also be individual analyzed on the tree, though most often they only make sense in relation to others.

Applications of the tree can be pretty different, but will remain parallel in terms of their shared qualities. Of course even here there's wiggle room to account for, which has been a recurrent obstacle for my order-loving self. But at the same time, if the premises of the tree of life and planetary archetypes are true, then these archetypes should be readily perceptable in the everyday, even without a chart or a background in astrology. they should be decipherable in common sense, as they are in folklore, myth, history, and commercial media

Thank you again both for your feedback and support -- I feel pretty inspired to work on more ideas.

And sorry it took so long to respond -- I tend to benefit from some reflection time, especially on subjects I rarely get to express out of my head as these
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Re: Astrological Planets vs. Jungian Personality Typology

Post by Noel Eastwood »

can I suggest that astrology, as an organic structure containing many dynamic interactions of the archetypes, is best seen as multilayered. Its hard to explain but something like Jupiter conjunct Saturn can be 'lived' by the individual in many different ways.

For instance, if they reside in the 10th House it is associated with career, achievements, discipline and other 10th House qualities. Then they will also relate to the House element, Earth, and also the element of the sign on the 10th House cusp . Next it is impacted in positive and negative ways by the other planets aspects to either or both of them. Next, the House cusp where Capricorn sits will be drawn into the 10th as will the House cusp where sits Sagittarius.... and so on.

I don't know your skill level nor even if you have studied astrology, what I wanted to do is share with you the complexities involved with two points in the chart. And that is just two, the horoscope is not limited to Saturn and Jupiter.

May I suggest that you read any book by Liz Greene, an astrologer psychologist with an eye to Jung who smoothly synthesises the two. Reading Jung is a challenge, English was not his native language.

I hope this is of help to you.
iauiugu
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Re: Astrological Planets vs. Jungian Personality Typology

Post by iauiugu »

I recognize how astrology is multilayered, but I've also found that the planetary archetypes are still pretty defineable in themselves, as I've found in Arroyo's Astrology, Karma, and Transformation, or Richard Tsarnas's Cosmos and Psyche, and on various websites, and in the kabbalah tree of life. I guess these comparisons are only loosely related to most of astrology, only addressing the planets and their associated meanings.

I'm currently reading Greene's Development of the Self lecture series book, and it's been pretty enlightening in terms of what astrology can or should be in practice. Her use of Jungian achetypes has also been helpful in defining his ideas in a more understandable way. I plan to read her book on Saturn next, to begin thinking of what i want to do and where i want to be when my return comes in a few years

Thank you for the suggestions and help
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Re: Astrological Planets vs. Jungian Personality Typology

Post by MichaelEister »

Thanks for sharing this information.
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