A NEW COSMOLOGY FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

With The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas gave the worldwhat many scholars, from Joseph Campbell to Huston Smith, regarded asone of the finest histories of the Western mind and spirit ever written.Now, Cosmos and Psyche challenges the basic assumptions of the modernworld view with an extraordinary new body of evidence that pointstowards a profound new perspective on the human role in the cosmos.

Based on thirty years of research, Cosmos and Psyche is the first bookby a widely respected scholar to demonstrate the existence of aconsistent correspondence between planetary movements and the archetypalpatterns of human experience. This volume examines such famous epochs ofcultural rebellion as the 1960s and the French Revolution, as well asperiods of historical crisis such as the world wars and September 11th.Cosmos and Psyche also explores comparable patterns and planetarycorrelations in the lives of many individuals, from Darwin, Nietzsche,and Freud to Martin Luther King, Betty Friedan, and John Lennon .

Cosmos and Psyche shines new light on the unfolding drama of humanhistory and our own critical age. It also suggests a new possibility forreuniting religion and science, soul and intellect, ancient wisdom andmodern reason in the quest to understand the past and create the future.

From Booklist:
World history is vast and confusing. How to find coherence? Tarnasthinks the answer lies in astrology. Possessing a tremendous amount ofhistorical knowledge, the author correlates human history's big eventsand personalities with the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune,and Pluto.

Why only Pluto, but not Pluto-size objects (or, for that matter,extrasolar planets) recently discovered, should reign over us goesunexamined, but be that as it may, Tarnas discusses charts, planetaryalignments, and archetypal personality traits embodied by the planets soaligned.

Reaching into mythology and Jungian psychology, Tarnas associateshistory makers with, for example, a Neptune-Pluto conjunction. Averringan empirical basis to his research, Tarnas proves a determined writerwhose fortress of connected dates, historical trends, and philosophicalthought defies would-be challengers to his cosmic viewpoint.

Casual astrology buffs and readers of the daily horoscope may findthis volume heavy going. This is a book for those who are as intriguedby and as convinced of astrology's validity as Tarnas. Gilbert Taylor
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From Publishers Weekly:
According to Tarnas, acclaimed author of The Passion of the Western Mind, history is on the verge of amajor shift, comparable to the one wrought by Copernicus and Galileo,but a seemingly antiscientific one: an astrological turn that can onlybe understood thorough chronicling planetary alignments as theycorrelate to the rise of the modern mind over the last 500 years.Understanding planetary alignments, for Tarnas, is crucial to theworld's future and requires "a genuine dialogue" with the cosmos, by"opening ourselves more fully" to "the other," to ancient and indigenousepistemologies, even "to other forms of life, other modes of theuniverse's self-disclosure." Filled with philosophical, religious,literary and scientific thinking ranging from Luther and Kepler throughHemingway and even Hitchcock and Dylan, Tarnas's book is not onlysweeping in subject but dense and sometimes painfully slow going. Itrequires at once a strong background in the history of modern thought,an advanced knowledge of astrology, a willingness to withhold skepticismabout the role of planetary alignments of the past in understanding lifetoday and the avoidance of imminent world catastrophe. Tarnas's call toredefine what we consider as "legitimate knowledge" will resonate insome sectors, but it will be a tough sell with the more scientificallyhardheaded. (Jan. 23)
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