Combining the doctrine of karma with the theory of astrology can account for
the fated quality of a person’s life and character. The chart may be seen as a seed plan
or blueprint of destiny, but in the end it is a self-created fate. This perspective suggests
that the infinite wisdom of the cosmos decrees that a person is born when the planets
are arranged in a structure that reflects the fate that the individual has earned on the
basis of past actions in past lives. Subsequent experiences with one’s culture and care-
takers derive out of a pre-existent psychic structure. The environment, then, begin-
ning with the body, is not so much a primary as a secondary cause of behavior; it is a
mirror reflecting the soul’s already existing internal structure.
In regard to the etiology of a pathological condition, the environment con-
firms, but it does not originate, the child’s primary anxieties and inner conflicts. Of
course, one cannot dispute environmental deficits and their effects. What needs to be
emphasized, however, is the individual’s accountability. In this view, the experienced
environment constitutes karmic feedback to activate, correct, and refine a person’s
innate character, however long and painful this process may be. As noted in an article
by J. Segal and H. Yahres in the November 1978 issue of Psychology Today,some stud-
ies indicate the child has as much effect on the parent as the parent has on the child,
thus the parent-child relationship is reciprocal. Likewise, recent developments in
past-lives therapy suggest that a given life may be but a single chapter in a long and
ongoing evolutionary process, as noted in such books as Coming Back: A Psychiatrist
Explores Past-Life Journeys(Moody), Many Lives, Many Masters,(Weiss), and Other
Lives, Other Selves(Woolger).
Psychological astrology emphasizes character over fate and does so for a simple
reason: human beings have more control over character than fate, thus character
deservesthe greater emphasis. As far as fate is concerned, early childhood conditions
signify the first and thus prototypical event pattern that reflects psychic structure.
This, however, does not mean that the environment is merely the effect of how it is
perceived (constructivism). The constructivist position that one constructs a reality
on the basis of meaning attributions is only relatively valid. It is valid in the sense that
how a person interprets events is going to shape his subsequent experience. His inter-
pretations will influence his feelings and behavior (subjective reality), and these, in
turn, will tend to influence subsequent responses from others (objective reality). In
this sense, each person doesconstruct a reality that conforms to his or her subjective
world. That subjective world, however, may derive initially from an objective fate that
has been earned on the basis of past actions in past lives, and which was internalized
at an early age in the form of emotionally significant childhood experiences—the pro-
totype event pattern. These formative experiences become part of psychic structure,
i.e., mental habits, beliefs, expectations, and images of self and other, all of which are
symbolized by the horoscope.
This formulation is consistent with Jung’s theory of synchronicity and his defi-
nition of archetypes as having a psychoidfactor, meaning they shape matter as well as
mind. A basic tenet of Jungian psychology (and psychological astrology) is that arche-
types/planets are nonlocal; they do not reside solely withinthe psyche as structural ele-
ments, but rather are inherent in nature as a whole. Archetypes are imminent and
thus infinitely diffused throughout nature. It is precisely this psychoid quality of the
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Psychological Astrology