Archetypal cosmology is a field of study that explores correlations between "discernible archetypal patterns in human experience and the structural order within the solar system."[1]
It uses astrological techniques to study the significance of planetary cycles and alignments, and it draws on fields such as Jungian depth psychology, Greek philosophy, transpersonal theory, and mythology to attempt to formulate a new cosmology or world view that recognizes that existence of archetypal principles and their significance for human experience.
Archetypal cosmology has been developed by a group of scholars in the San Francisco Bay Area including Richard Tarnas, Stanislav Grof, Keiron Le Grice, Rod O’Neal, and Bill Streett. Tarnas's Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View presents a large body of historical evidence in support of this perspective, and further research is presented in Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology, edited by Le Grice and O’Neal.[2] A theoretical framework for the field is advanced in Le Grice's The Archetypal Cosmos: Rediscovering the Gods in Myth, Science and Astrology, which synthesizes Jungian depth psychology and the new paradigm sciences to outline a new mythic worldview.[3]
Drawing on Jungian ideas and Platonism, archetypal cosmology emphasizes the archetypal basis of astrology, seeing archetypes as cosmological factors informing both the psyche and the cosmos rather than as psychological images within the individual mind. It seeks to give explanations of the philosophical basis of these correlations, and aspires toward a methodological rigor based on demonstrated empirical correlations between planetary cycles and pattern of human experience. Archetypal cosmology is primarily concerned not with the individual psyche, but the with the anima mundi, the interiority of the universe at large.
More generally, the term archetypal cosmology refers to any cosmology or world view that recognizes the existence of archetypes as ordering principles behind human experience. The phrase has been used to describe the ideas of Shakespeare,[4] Kepler[5], Goethe,[6] Jung,[7] Northrup Frye,[8] and others.[9]