This series covers events from 04/05/1982 - 05/17/1982

This three-part series examines Sigmund Freud’s horoscope through traditional and philosophic astrology.

The April 5 class lays the groundwork by reading the Sabian symbols for the seven Chaldean planetary degrees, classifying planets by dignity, element, and quadrant to determine Freud's psychological type, and examining major transits for three pivotal moments: meeting his wife and deciding to become a physician in June 1882, studying with Charcot in Paris in December 1885, and writing The Interpretation of Dreams in March 1898. The class questions why Freud, rather than earlier theorists like von Hartmann, triggered collective interest in the unconscious, concluding that his fabricative planets arranged circumstances making him an instrument for transmitting knowledge despite his having limited gnostic insight.

The May 10 class locates the native’s identity in the pattern of planets organized by degrees, and in the ruler of the first house. Mars, which rules Freud’s Scorpio ascendant, is his primary identity and forms the cornerstone of his psychology. The class distinguishes physiological processes from instinctual functioning, with Jupiter representing instinctual functioning and the embodiment of the six forces of Nature. Freud’s Mars-Jupiter opposition shows his inability to see higher meaning in the instincts, reducing everything to body-based causes and turning sex into dogma, with the T-square to Saturn viewing the ego as a phantasm of instinctual functioning.

The May 17 class reviews principles of the natal chart and reads Damiani's theoretical paper "The Astrological Mandala," which discusses the chart as a product of the archetypal imagination that shows how the reason-principles that constitute the sensible person symbolically reveal themselves. A detailed analysis of aspects follows: Venus sextile Saturn (undoing past devaluation of feeling); Mercury sextile Jupiter (teacher relationships, body-focused insights); Mars Jupiter Saturn T-square (tension between life and death instincts, ego as product of this conflict); and unaspected Sun at 17 Taurus, interpreted as offering the person the fundamental freedom to choose between might/materialism and enlightenment—a choice Freud made consciously and repeatedly in favor of materialism. An examination of the trans-Saturnian transits throughout his 83-year lifespan reveals numerous opportunities for spiritual development that were rejected, with the conclusion that already built into his Mars was a decision to serve the libidinal forces that were involved in the 20th-century moral breakdown.

Classes and documents available in this series