The technique for assessing the fundamental temperament from a natal chart
is discussed in many standard works of what, as noted in Nicholas Culpeper’s Astrologi-
cal Judgement of Diseases from the Decumbiture of the Sick,is now known as traditional
astrology. There is general agreement on the importance of four factors: The element
of the ascendant sign, the phase of the Moon, the season of the Sun, and the element
of the sign of the lord of the geniture (the planet that is strongest by essential dignity
while not being accidentally weakened). Additional factors are sometimes added to
this list, and different ways of analyzing the information are given. It should also be
noted that methods are sometimes given for judging temperament without reference
to the natal chart—for instance, as noted by Culpeper, the appearance of an individ-
ual or by their behavior or their dreams, according to John Gadbury’s Genethlialogia, or
The Doctrine of Nativities Together with the Doctrine of Horarie Questions.
The advent of modern science saw the humors go out of favor as a tool of med-
ical analysis, and astrologers—with their craft also under attack from the new
zeitgeist—gradually stopped using them. In Raphael’s Guide to Astrologyfrom 1877 there
is a short section on temperament, in which the four elements are described as giving
more or less heat to the nature; this is a clear throwback to the humors, though they are
not mentioned by name. By the time Charles E. O. Carter published his Encyclopaedia
of Psychological Astrologyin 1924, the section on humor was concerned only with what
makes people laugh. Astrology’s connection with the humors was forgotten.
Though by this point the humors were dead and buried so far as astrology was
concerned, the psychologist Carl Jung was already working on a study that would lead
to their rebirth.Jung’s Quaternal Heritage
It is fairly well known that Jung had some interest in astrology. Indeed, in a letter to B.
V. Raman in September 1947, he wrote:
I am particularly interested in the particular light the horoscope sheds
on certain complications in the character. In cases of difficult psycho-
logical diagnosis, I usually get a horoscope.... I have very often found
that the astrological data elucidated certain points which I otherwise
would have been unable to understand.
Though this probably gives an exaggerated impression of the extent to which
Jung used astrology, it is beyond dispute that he read widely among ancient astrologi-
cal and alchemical literature, and absorbed a good deal of the underlying philosophy
that those disciplines shared.
An example of this influence in his work is Jung’s emphasis on the quaternity
as being archetypal; a mythological motif that was “always collective” and “common
to all times and all races,” as noted in The Collected Works of C. G. Jung.As Jung
explicitly states:
The quaternity is one of the most widespread archetypes and has also
proved to be one of the most useful schemata for representing the arrange-
ment of the functions by which the conscious mind takes its bearings.Temperaments in Jungian Psychology
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