We as spiritual beings or souls come to earth in order to experience the human condition. This includes the good and the bad scenarios of this world. Our world is a duality planet and no amount of love or grace will eliminate evil or nastiness. We will return again and again until we have pierced the illusions of this density. The purpose of human life is to awaken to universal truth. This also means that we must awaken to the lies and deceit mankind is subjected to. To pierce the third density illusion is a must in order to remove ourselves from the wheel of human existences. Love is the Answer by means of Knowledge and Awareness!

The Problem with Astrology

Astrology: The Manifesto
by Patrice Guinard (CURA, http://cura.free.fr 2000-2001) 
(Reviewed by Shelley Jordan, Jan. 2002, Edition 16)
 
At this point in history - the beginning of the 21st century - when 
astrology should be undergoing a thorough renovation and re-evaluation, it 
is instead experiencing what seems in effect like an adolescent identity 
crisis. After the promising astrological renaissance of the 20th century, 
which gave us Dane Rudhyar’s luminous philosophy, Dr. Zipporah Dobyns’ 
stream-lined analysis and John Addey’s harmonic theory, the excitement of 
astrology’s innovative trends appears to be diminishing. Slowly sinking in 
the quagmire of its own linguistic rigor mortis and conceptual dead ends, 
astrology’s creative growing tip seems stunted. Searching for a means of 
respectable integration into contemporary culture, astrological literature 
continually tends to adopt the rhetoric and camouflage of more socially and 
economically acceptable disciplines, such as psychology, statistical 
science, physics or any number of ‘honorable’ epistemologies.

Faced with astrology’s frequent and boring repetition of antiquated 
doctrine, its shortage of creative thinking and its geriatric philosophical 
anemia stemming, incredulously, from its utter inability to get past the 
predestination and prediction issue, many practitioners have responded with 
a dangerously reactionary reversal of direction. A popular trend has become 
the mining of the sanctum of astrology’s past, a worthy project in itself, 
but degraded by the ulterior and naive quest for the True and Lost 
Techniques of the Ancients, those illusory Golden Age methods of legend 
which are said to accurately predict the future. An alternative and equally 
futile effort to salvage astrology has been the tendency to justify itself 
with the language and concepts of scientism, which are, in fact, alien to 
the true nature of astrology.

Another serious disability of astrology’s has been its age-old predilection 
for dichotomizing all its principles into categories of "good-bad," 
"male-female," and "light-dark." The roots of this bankrupt tendency are 
hopelessly tangled in astrology’s enmeshment with religion; this dualism has 
clung like a tenacious barnacle to the underside of astrology’s subconscious 
for millennia, dragging it through the mire with its illegitimate consort of 
shame - fortune-telling.

Fortunately, Dr. Patrice Guinard has now stepped into the foreground of 
astrological research with what may be some of the most revelatory 
astrological writing of this current era. An addition to the list of 
France’s impressive lineage of major innovators, in the succession of 
Rudhyar and the Gauquelins, Guinard has developed his own vocabulary, 
definitions and methodology for explaining and illuminating our 
understanding of the astrological. He has formulated a new and visionary 
model for a tired discipline dangerously in need of fresh ideas.

Fully responding to the above-mentioned problems in astrology and, in fact, 
far more, Guinard’s Manifesto is a complex and revolutionary work, part of a 
larger opus which includes his doctoral dissertation on astrology for the 
Department of Philosophy at the Sorbonne. Vast and multi-natured in its 
scope, the Manifesto is at once an eloquent and sound explanation of the 
nature and function of the astrological phenomenon - philosophically, 
psychologically and anthropologically - and simultaneously a vigorous 
polemic against the calcified orthodoxies of both astrology and the cultural 
mentalities which persecute it.

While calling attention to astrology’s recent advances, Guinard warns 
against the exogenous one-dimensional approach taken by historians of 
astrology who proceed as if there were one astrology, and the endogenous 
damage done to astrology by the mass market production of sun sign columns 
and fatuous pre-fabricated chart interpretation packages.

My own personal encounter with the Manifesto generated an initial response 
of disbelief as I first read through the rich language of its authoritative 
pages. Disbelief became joy when I realized that at last I had come across 
some genuinely intelligent and seminal astrological writing - free, no less 
- with no strings attached and nothing for sale - and available to anyone 
who takes the time to read it on its website at CURA’s tri-lingual online 
journal. I recommend that you print out its fourteen chapters - you will 
want to read it more than once to fully absorb its breadth and implications.


The Astral Matrix and Matrix-Based Reason

Central to an understanding of Guinard’s Manifesto is the theory of 
matrix-based thinking. Also called matricial reasoning, this model of 
perception explains both the process by which astrological information is 
received into the personal and collective consciousness from planetary 
cycles as well as how the psyche ‘thinks astrologically.’ Matrix-based 
thinking is to be distinguished from the quantitative and causal logic of 
the empirical and scientistic world view, and the descriptive-interpretive 
modality of history or linguistics. Matrix-based thinking is a global 
process of coordinating psychic states, of experiencing relative "states of 
being" in a living cosmos which is an organic reticulum of interconnected 
multiplicities, which can be ordered by the psyche according to the innate, 
symbolic archetypal themes which permeate and condition consciousness.

There exists on its own terms an organizing astral matrix, which "structures 
psychic phenomena," unifying the planetary cycles of the geo-solar 
environment with the personal psyche by means of trace impressions 
(impressio), impregnations of evanescent imprints at the level of 
preconsciousness. In other words, the planets’ activities within the 
naturally occurring structural fabric of the zodiac resonate as transitory 
interior states of consciousness. This is not a physical theory of 
astrological influences, which he distinguishes as cosmobiology, but an 
epistemological model of consciousness, unimpeded by dualism or quantitative 
scientific pseudo-analysis.

"Matrix or psycho-synthetic structure (astrological)... reveals the 
organization of potential reality... Impressionistic awareness 
(impressionaux) are not psychic states, but rather "minimal" forms, of 
archetypal nature, limited in number, which innervate those states." 
(Chapter 4)

This is not the discovery of a causal model for astrology - let the 
physicists worry about that, says Guinard. Astrology exists as its own 
structural model and needs to further cultivate and develop its own 
constructs. It is not an invention, but is a perceived and operational 
system; it exists in nature and would continue to operate even if there were 
no astrologers. The psyche is simply in resonance with the cyclical 
planetary environment. Guinard’s structural approach perceives reality as a 
continuum of generally organized "elements forming a totality" in an 
interconnected web of relationships, which occur at the psychic level of 
interiority as well as in the physical spheres.

Concerning the phasic nature of the cyclicality of planetary periods and 
their impregnation of the psychic field, Guinard states:

"The cyclical structure is imprinted on the neural organization, which 
reproduces the periodic variations of the planets. Neuro-psychological 
integration of geo-solar rhythms translates itself into a continuous psychic 
stimulus ? astral incidence ? and into a structuring of the nervous system 
through pre-conscious mental states, which in turn give rise to 
psycho-mental representations." (Chapter 5)

In other words, the psyche is activated with subtle astrological symbols at 
the substratum of awareness, in resonance with the cyclicality of the 
planets. Astrology’s object is one of structuring relationship between the 
human psyche and the cosmic environs within it which it is situated.

Guinard lays out three primary postulations of astrology:

1. The existence of a primary, psychic interior world which perceives and 
organizes information from the concrete, phenomenal world. The psychic 
states of this qualified interiority are the conceptual substratum of 
language and objects.

2. The interior world, called the psychic-astral by Guinard, is in a state 
of constant activity - forever animated and energized by the continual 
movements of the shifting planetary cycles. These planetary patterns create 
"impressionals" in the psyche, which take the form of transient 
infinitesimals of pre-conscious awareness infused into the subjective 
interiority.

3. Inherent in the psyche are structuring capabilities - conditioning 
milieux - which format the received astral information, organizing these 
pre-conscious awarenesses by means of an innate, naturally occurring 
quadripartite organizational process consisting of spatial houses, energetic 
planetary forces, temporal cycles and aspects, and the structure of the zodiac.

Guinard distinguishes between astral influences and impressionals, the 
fleeting pre-conscious awarenesses resulting from an astronomical signal. 
The impressionals are experienced as open-ended symbols - archetypal forms 
beyond reason which originate in the astral.

"The notion of the pre-conscious awareness liberates astrology from its 
servitude to an exterior psychology, be it psychoanalytic, behaviorist, 
phenomenological, gestaltist, existentialist or reflexologic. It is time for 
astrology to forge its own concepts." (Chapter 1)


Astrology and Science

The Manifesto discusses astrology and its position in relation to the 
prevailing scientistic orthodoxies of our day. Science, the new opiate of 
the people, is the current substitute for Christian religion and morality, 
and can be divided into three main categories, corresponding to the three 
modalities in which information impresses itself in the field of personal 
consciousness.

Reality can be perceived as an object - this perceptual mode generating the 
material, empirical sciences, such as biochemistry. Reality can be received 
as signs requiring interpretation; in this category falls the interpretive 
social or humanistic sciences, historic and hermeneutic in nature. Reality 
can, lastly, be received as impressions, states of being; to this category 
belongs the psycho-synthetic science of astrology, which "perceives reality 
in relation to the totality of psychic being."

Guinard continually emphasizes the global, non-dual and organic nature of 
consciousness, and that astrology is a system which is involved, not with 
events, but with states of consciousness, a position which liberates it from 
the predictive, outcome-oriented tendencies which have metasticized to 
nearly every facet of its practice. Prediction, which is considered by 
traditional astrology to be the supreme and consummate skill, is called the 
"siren’s song" of the astrologers by Guinard.

In discussing the "astrophobia" of the scientific community, the Manifesto 
is thorough in its analysis and discussion of the common attacks against 
astrology, which typically reveal the attacker’s "nullity" of knowledge and 
comprehension of the subject. Guinard covers all the well-worn arguments of 
precession, action at a distance, and the materialist argument which 
complains about the "imaginary" factors of the signs, aspects and houses. In 
his examination and refutation of the various forms that the 
"anti-astrological polemic" has taken, Guinard is at all times candid, 
passionate and convincing in his defense and exposition of astrology - 
unique among disciplines in its endless victimization.

"Rare are those bodies of knowledge, such as astrology, which must 
continually confront their detractors... In the context of modern society, 
astrology is held in scant esteem; its principles are denied any validity; 
its practices are ridiculed. It is called to account to justify itself 
vis-a-vis a variety of institutionalized presuppositions, customs, beliefs 
and skepticisms. There exists no universal manifesto against psychoanalysis, 
Voodoo, historical materialism or the immaterialism of Berkeley. No 
religious sect, doctrine or practice is so regularly vilified by the 
pontifications of the intelligentsia, nor is its voice left so willfully 
unheard by the skeptical deafness of those who claim to be the possessors of 
knowledge." (Chapter 7)

Attacks against astrology are often aimed, blindly, at its "parody", the 
mass market astrology of sun sign columns. Guinard goes on to suggest that 
astrology may present such a threat to the intellectual world because it 
might be a "true alternative to unidimensional thought."

The Manifesto as Astrological Literature

It is impossible for this reviewer to adequately cover the exhaustive 
complexity and poetic fire of the Manifesto. It is an entirely new 
astrological genre. One is left with the feeling that Guinard has allowed 
few intellectual stones to remain unturned in his epic analysis of 
astrology, its functional operatives and its role in society. The level of 
sophistication and learning represented by the Manifesto’s discussion of 
astrology’s most critical questions and dilemmas sets a new standard for 
future astrological thinkers and researchers. This is high-brow astrology at 
its finest, written in powerful academic yet imaginative language. For his 
brilliant vision, definitions and defense of astrology, Patrice Guinard is 
one of its most important and intelligent pioneers.

The Manifesto should be required reading for all serious students or 
opponents of astrology. At the present time, the Manifesto is not in print. 
It cannot be purchased or borrowed from a library. It is only available on 
the CURA tri-lingual website.

To cite this page:
Shelley Jordan: De Docta Astrologia: C.U.R.A.'s Book Reviews 
http://cura.free.fr/books2.html
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