Coleman worked in numerous capacities as an administrator at the California
Institute of Integral Studies, an alternative institution of higher education in San
Francisco, from 1982 through 2001. She served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador in
1978–79 where she learned about AstroCartoGraphy from a fellow volunteer. She
has worked on several international conferences with the International Transpersonal
Association, and pioneered the concept and development of youth conferences as part
of major conferences.
COLLECTIVEUNCONSCIOUS(ARCHETYPES)
The collective unconscious, a term coined by the psychologist Carl Jung, refers to the
storehouse of myths and symbols to which all human beings have access. Much of tradi-
tional Jungian analysis focuses on the interpretation of dreams. Jung found that the dreams
of his clients frequently contained images with which they were completely unfamiliar but
that seemed to reflect symbols that could be found somewhere in the mythological systems
of world culture; the notion of the collective unconscious was used to explain this phe-
nomenon. Jung further found that he could often interpret his patients’ dreams if he stud-
ied and reflected upon the particular myth or symbol to which the dream image seemed to
allude. In certain cases, deeper and more complete significance for the dream image could
be uncovered by locating similar images in more than one cultural system. Researching
such images in the quest for deeper meanings is referred to as amplification.
Jung’s unique contribution to modern psychology begins with the observation
that the basic structure of many symbols and myths is nearly universal, even between
cultures with no historical influence on one another. Most traditional societies, for
example, tell hero myths and use circles to represent wholeness and the sky to symbol-
ize transcendence, etc. Jung theorized that this universality resulted from unconscious
patterns (genetic or quasi-genetic predispositions to utilize certain symbolic and
mythic structures) that we inherited from our distant ancestors. The reservoir of these
patterns constitutes a collective unconscious, distinct from the individual, personal
unconscious that is the focus of Freudian psychoanalysis.
Jung referred to the unconscious, predisposing patterns for particular myths
and symbols as archetypes; hence, one can talk about the mandala (i.e., the circle)
archetype, the hero archetype (which was made famous by the Jungian thinker Joseph
Campbell), and so forth. Astrologers adopted this kind of language for discussions
about the elements of their craft, e.g., the Mars archetype, the Venus archetype, etc.
Sources:
Burt, Kathleen. Archetypes of the Zodiac.Saint Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1990.
Valentine, Christine. Images of the Psyche: Exploring the Planets Through Psychology and Myth.
Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK: Element Books, 1991.
COLORS AND THEZODIAC
Human beings have often perceived colors as constituting a kind of symbolic alpha-
bet, so it is natural that colors would come to be associated with the signs of the zodiac
THEASTROLOGYBOOK [163]
Colors and the Zodiac