To Our Readers

Abstract

When friends and colleagues ask me if I believe in astrology, I always tell them I don’t believe in astrology; I study it. More than three decades ago, I walked into astrologer and Jungian analyst Julie Bresciani’s sanctuary in Manhattan for the first astrology reading I’d ever experienced. I walked out sobbing, my heart touched deeply, for the truths that were reflected to me from the mandala that was my natal chart. Astrology offered a nuanced language: of personality, of life purpose, of conflictual themes, and of unexpected convergences. It was a language that was not pathological— one that was fierce and direct, one that I chose to continue to use as a resource for myself and for others with whom I have worked. Perhaps as Richard Tarnas says in the interview with Stanislav Grof, it was wise of Jung to keep his interest in astrology in the background as he moved his psychological endeavor into the world. It is likely that the twentieth-century world of science would have eschewed its credibility. Rick Tarnas, who has collaborated with his friend and colleague Stan Grof for over four decades, has studied the archetypal patterns of astrology and how they relate deeply to significant global events. Stan’s seminal work on perinatal experience and in the field of nonordinary states of consciousness and Rick’s tracking of the astrological aspects converge in remarkable ways. Both men, widely accomplished, generously agreed to speak casually and candidly with me to explore many important themes: perinatal experience, non-ordinary states of consciousness, archetypal patterns, and astrology as a transpersonal phenomenon. In addition to Rick Tarnas’s part of the interview, two articles in this issue draw on astrological knowledge, Yvonne Smith Klitsner illustrates the synchronicity of astrological resonance in clinical work, and Safron Rossi explores the effects of Saturn and connects astrological factors with Jung’s birth chart. On a different theme, authors Felicia Norton and Charles Smith explore the work of C. G. Jung and Marie Louise von Franz and the traditions of the Sufi alchemists in relationship to the natural world. Three authors, all part of the San Francisco Jungian community, Raymond Buscemi, Charles Asher, and Robin Greenberg, have contributed original and insightful essays to this issue’s STREAMS & CURRENTS “On Secrets.” That theme is also deeply embedded in Jeffrey