The process of individuation in astrology

This article is the first in a series of in-depth articles that deal with Jungian psychology and the process of individuation : specifically, the Anima, the Animus, the Shadow, and Depression are discussed.

“There is no new frontier to explore other than that of the human soul.” Carl Gustav Jung

What is individuation ?

Individuation is a psychological process of development and awareness of our profound individuality, described and popularized by the psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.
To embark on the path of individuation means to be characterized as someone who is emerging as an individual from the masses, not as a result of eccentricity, but rather through self-affirmation and making oneself whole, by the realization of one’s own completeness…

Behind this seemingly easy-to-understand definition lies the true reality of living through this process : introspection, reflection, solitude, doubt, anxiety and Depression, and a deep metamorphosis or even transcendence. It’s a series of inseparable, inexorable phases.

Jung did not lie to people about this process. He warned them, specifically highlighting that they could not hope to succeed in their integration of the individuation process if they were not internally driven by a true “calling,” an absolute need. Without a pressing need, human beings are resistant to change, and neither good advice from others nor a positive attitude is enough to motivate them on its own to drive change.

In reality, many people do not ask to begin their individuation : they are “called upon” and pulled out of their relative unconscious state by their true personality, which demands that it be able to express itself, plunging them de facto into their process of individuation and making them face their problems. A voice inside of them makes itself heard and encourages them to expand their awareness and live a fuller life.
Everyone, at least theoretically, has the opportunity to consciously respond to this internal call.

Jung came to the following conclusion : “Fortunately, out of kindness and patience, the universe has never pushed most people to ask themselves questions about the meaning of their lives. And when there is no question, there is no need to respond.”

For those who are living through it, the process of individuation requires a great many conditions to be met for its success; this work is long-term, and achieving psychological, biological, and social fulfillment takes nothing less than one’s entire life.

Identifying the entirety of one’s underlying potential and then expressing it, while still maintaining as much freedom as possible, is no easy task : it’s truly the greatest undertaking of the human mind, and in the best-case scenario it may even begin during childhood, but it’s dangerous.

This accomplishment is all at the same time a blessing, a privilege, and a curse, a true burden, because it requires us to separate and differentiate ourselves from the shapeless masses of the collective and for our consciousness to emerge from the unconscious. It’s the alchemistic “Great Work” (the Magnum Opus) : a person’s personality comes out of the “Prima Materia” after having undergone multiple, successive transformations, and after having faced the “Nigredo”, their Shadow.

Self-actualization is the meaning of human life; the persons who cannot realize their completeness are missing out on the richness of their fundamental individuality, their core being, and will repress their true self, sinking into frustration, repression, making themselves prone to the psychosomatic disorders that come along with these issues.

To successfully undergo the required series of transformations, persons’ intelligence, persistence, inner strength, belief in providence, and faith in God are some of the qualities that can help them prevail and undergo their individuation in a conscious manner.

The process of individuation

Individuation is thus a conflict that is inherent to human nature, and before discovering the “Self,” it’s necessary to first strengthen the “I”, the ego. Without this basis, the foundations of a person’s personality are too fragile. In order to be receptive to the transcendence of life, the persons must first sharpen their understanding of daily life, which gives them a good foundation for their superior Self so that they are able to express themselves and their personality.

It’s impossible to strengthen that of which we are not aware, and so the first step consists of understanding our personality in its entirety, with all of its aspects, sometimes antagonistic or complementary, and all of the psychological opposites, especially the conscious and the unconscious, and considering each of them to be of equal value in our psyche. This progression is inclusive : in other words, it integrates each sub-personality, not only giving each one the right to exist but also recognizing its intrinsic, fundamental psychological utility.

A person can never be perfectly complete : we can never be “everything at once”, having both a particular quality and its opposite, and we need to favor the development of certain qualities over others, in the course of our lives.
For this reason, the logical (Air), rational (Earth) persons will have trouble opening up to their intuition (Fire) and feelings (Water), while the persons who are particularly sensitive will analyze and intellectualize things differently from how a logical, cerebral person would.

Thus, everyone has “superior qualities” (conscious and active) and “inferior qualities” (unconscious and repressed), and as human beings our lives are centered on creating a coherent synthesis of it all.
And these concepts are relevant because on our paths through life, during Synchronicities, we often cross the “right people”, who allow us to project our inferior qualities onto them, whether it be the Shadow, the Anima, or the Animus, thus offering us the opportunity to “complete” ourselves (see Synastry).

One of the founding principles of modern psychology is recognizing that the conscious and the unconscious counterbalance each other. Any form of repression in the unconscious will inevitably surface in one way or another in the conscious, as though the two were communicating vessels. The conscious is derived from the unconscious, and in reality one could even say that the conscious is nothing but the slender tip of the immense iceberg that forms the unconscious. The collective unconscious -and its archetypes- feed the conscious, and this unconscious needs to be assimilated into the conscious during the process of individuation, which means that one’s personality needs to assert itself above social influences.

Jung said that “the meeting with oneself is to meet with one’s Shadow”. If we know that the shadow reveals itself through encounters with “Others”, then we know that social relationships are a necessary passage on the path of individuation process.

Therefore, individuation process is in part the result of some form of social fulfillment (irrespective of its form), because no individual was created “ex nihilo,” or from nothing, everyone comes from a particular culture, family, and tradition, and everyone’s destiny is to use our knowledge and experience to -in some way- be a part of the social life available in our society and sow the “seeds that will become seedlings” -as Dane Rudhyar liked to say- that will aid in the development of generations to come.

Social relationships are an integral part of individuation. They lead to relationship problems that allow for individuation to occur once the relationship has become adequately involved and intense, whether the result is joy or sorrow.

Ultimately, one achieves social fulfillment as a part of the collective, to the benefit of all, with the person’s entire psychological full of the spirit of sharing and cooperation, benefiting from others but also suffering at times.
Not subjecting oneself to the hardship and worry involved in human interactions amounts to denying and refusing true significance of these relationships.

It’s particularly important not to confuse individuation with individualism, which puts the emphasis on a single person at the expense of the community, resulting in a conflict of individual interests with those of the community, a reality that simply leads to egoism and egocentricity.

The psychiatrist Fritz Kunkel explored all of this in detail when discussing this notions of “We-Psychology”, the “psychology of God”, and also in the “Creation continues” concept :

“No human being can achieve self-actualization if we are not connected to a group of people.
Even in the most complete isolation, we are still linked to a group through our imagination, thoughts, culture, desires, hatreds, criticisms and hopes.

The “We-experience” is always present inside of every person. It’s what pushes us to share others’ lives inside of ourselves and to intervene to change the destiny of groups, families, nations, and civilizations by protesting or critiquing, by advising or participating, or even by asserting our authority.

The more persons find their way on the path to individuation, the more these persons realize that their personal interests are being replaced by a feeling of responsibility for the whote world beyond themselves (the universal monad).
They themselves exist only as a member of their group; and the group only truly exists if it is linked to all of humanity.
The true “Self” is thus not the “I” but the “We”.

Furthermore, the Self is not only love and fraternity, but also the creation of the Creator, who is doing his work through individuals. They who find themselves, find God. The true Self is the ultimate goal of religious growth and development.
At first the goal is the “I”, then it becomes the “We / Us”, and finally it’s the “Him”, the retreat of self, in the third person, with respect to the creation and the Creator.“

Dane Rudhyar, astrologer, thoroughly studied Jung’s work and his notions of depth psychology. He also believed that individuation is very much like gestation. A person has to emerge from the “collective womb”, which represents tradition, religion, culture, and morality, so as to reach the individual, psychological maturity.
It’s an eternal combat between the individual and the collective, leading to liberation from the Great universal Mother and the past.

Dane Rudhyar recommended deepening our relationship with ourself, not allowing ourself to normalize emotional reactions or to erase failures and shocks, but rather trying to get in touch with the fundamental energy of your being and the inherent compulsions and duties of your race, and your ancestral traditions.
If we want to succeed in our individuation, we need to face humanity, its entire past, and its whole future and its becoming, all the while carrying inside of us the divine goal of human evolution.

• Achieving success means integrating your personality and rising to the level of true individuality.
• Failure to do so leads to regression, to a restraint and a crystallization of the psyche into old patterns, or even disintegrating, and to the invasion of the conscious ego by the energies of the unconscious.

In his work, Jung took great inspiration from leading religious movements, especially the Eastern movements, such as Taoism, Hinduism, Tantra, Yoga, etc. It’s thus that the psychological steps on the path to individuation that he mapped out are largely equivalencies of the esoteric processes of these movements.

A Kundalini awakening is not really the complementary union of man (Shiva) and woman (Shakti), though it’s often reduced to this, but rather the union of the individual (the personality and the ego) to the collective (the absolute transcendent reality). Each chakra represents a different stage in this relationship, this mystic internal marriage, and in the end, the individual principle harmonizes and merges with the collective principle into a single, unique reality.

Thus, individuals are becoming the true fruit of the collective; they carry out God’s work, expressing the creativity of this higher being, and they become the realization of the complete unity of all things, reconciling that which is contrary : it’s the Tao, the middle path of Buddhism, the union of the instinctive, primitive lower chakras, with the spiritual, transcendent upper chakras, and in astrology they represent an internal union of the personal planets (The Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars), the social planets (Jupiter and Saturn), and the transpersonal planets (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto).

Jung made this process of personality development more accessible to Westerners, making it more logical, down-to-earth, and scientific, less mystical in appearance, and thus ultimately a bit more appealing and affordable to this other culture… but the esoteric ancestral approach and the approach of Jungian psychology are fundamentally the same.
Jung’s comparisons were appropriate when at a conference he evoked “The psychology of Kundalini Yoga”, the “Secret of the Golden Flower” or when he analyzed and referenced alchemy, Hermeticism, and astrology : different paths, a single destination.

Individuation in astrology

“A person’s true personality always has a particular sense of direction that it believes to be the best; it’s always faithful to this direction, as it’s to God, even though the common person would say that this is nothing but a sense of predestination. But this predestination acts like a law of God from which there is no escape. The fact that many succumb while on their own path is of no importance to those who are predestined.”
Carl Gustav Jung

It’s interesting to read this citation while keeping in mind the value of an astrological Birth chart in modern psychology. Jung himself recognized that the birth charts of some of his patients gave him access to a part of their personality that he never would have been able to see otherwise and that helped to explain many of the things that his patients were experiencing.

A birth chart allows us, in a way that no other tool does, to define a person’s personality in its entirety (holistically); every planet and every point has its place in creating a complete picture and gives clues to help us to identify the many Sub-personalities within ourselves and to understand how to concretely express these different aspects.

For this, all astrologers have their own approach. For example, karmic astrologers emphasize the Black moon and the Lunar nodes, performing a very advanced analysis of a person’s entire life, while practitioners of traditional, humanistic, or psychological astrology tend to stick more to the fundamentals and daily applications : the Sun, the Moon, the Ascendant, the personal, social, and transpersonal planets, Transits, etc.

In the first round of analysis, the expression of the Sun (the masculine Yang, the Animus) is dominant (especially in men) : it pushes the individual to differentiate himself/herself from others, and encourages to develop the ego and also flourish on a personal level. It represents the willpower and the image that they project through their personality.
But be careful : the Sun does not correspond exactly to the Self; it symbolizes the Self’s energy source, or the Mind, but the Self is the entire sky at one’s birth. The Self is the entirety of one’s birth chart.

As for the Moon (the feminine Yin, the Anima), this celestial body is dominant for women, and it yearns for contact and relationships as well as fully experiencing the collective experience, evaluating it, and understanding it. It symbolizes our needs, and in particular our emotional and affective needs.

It reveals how the individuals are connected instinctively to the rest of the world and to their inner perceptions, which are sometimes unconscious or even irrational, how they are tied to their home, how they live on a daily basis, where they seek refuge, etc…

French astrologer André Barbault spoke of “confronting the line of great resistance” when we pass from the Moon (childhood) to the Sun (adulthood) : we must fight against automatisms, suggestion, instincts, emotionalism, to move towards “consented deprivations”.

• The Moon represents the initial attitudes that were inherited from the family at the stage of vital emergence, at birth.
• The Sun represents the sublimated life, the full complexity of personality in a psychic synthesis, including the social aspects, the fully-developed abilities, and the unity of the psyche. At this stage, we no longer have to simply put up with our fate in life, but rather fulfill our destiny and become a center of creation ourselves : a sun.

In his book “From psychoanalysis to astrology”, he explains the following :

Psychoanalysis reveals that an inner energy spurs the psyche on towards the fulfillment of its destiny; people instinctively steer towards that which they already have inside of them, whether it be in the form of an image or a symbol.
Also, our future and becoming are not as dependent as we might think on external events, but we can actually choose from the possibilities presented to us, those opportunities that are in line with our nature.
No external force can have a significant, lasting impact on a person’s soul without their internal energy being involved and complicit.
Character and destiny are two aspects that arise from the same natural, deterministic forces : we cannot separate individuals from their destiny, and their inner tendencies are not distinct from their existence.

The other planets come into play as well, sometimes reinforcing the Animus or Anima, other times giving life to the Shadow, as well as Jupiter, the 9th House, Sagittarius, essentially anything that might be able to “Create meaning” in the search for oneself. Each one can initiate or simply participate in the various phases of individuation and serve more or less as a projection support in our social relationships.

The analysis of Transits is also a way in which Astrology shows itself to be useful, because they reflect a person’s development, including the stage of development where the individuals are currently at, the phases that they have gone through in the past, and the phases that they will experience in the future. This development occurs in successive cycles in the form of a spiral, with the transits activating the different parts of a chart multiple times.

• When used correctly, transits represent Creativity; they go hand in hand with change, support individuation process, and lead to individual, spiritual liberation and fulfillment.
• When used incorrectly or experienced in a negative way, suffered, they can lead to the collapse of the ego’s mask, an exacerbation of the projection of the Shadow, and an explosion of all the repressed patterns of the unconscious, resulting in general confusion, in some life-changing events (kind of “break”), feelings of what we generically call “Depression” (which covers many aspects of various psychiatric disorders), and self-questioning that manifests itself mentally, emotionally, or even physically (psychosomatic disorders).

Progressions and Solar Returns show us how the process of individuation regulates itself (based on a person’s Birth chart) : which doors will be open, and when ?

Individuation and modern Western society

In light of the above, we might legitimately wonder : how is it useful to our “modern democratic Western society” (and to those who control our society) for a person to reach this level of self-fulfillment ? (see le myth of Sisyphus, or the death of god)
The answer is simple : it’s not useful. Today’s society is not actually interested in accommodating people who have undergone the process of individuation.

Individuation is freedom, self-affirmation, thought, introspection, and the development of inner strength, and thus, from the perspective of those in power, it also amounts in part to an increased unpredictability of an individual’s behavior…
Society wants nothing but sheep. It simply wants to be in charge of a herd : a docile, barely conscious, poorly educated crowd, one that it’s easier to manipulate and that it can shear, one that allows itself to be willingly exploited, nothing but livestock that can be sacrificed as needed…

To this end, society restricts and inhibits as much as possible people’s ability to begin their individuation, using a wide array of practices : excessive hand-holding, putting citizens on a social, financial, and psychological drip, an outpouring of propaganda through the media, subterfuge in order to sap people’s self-confidence, limiting, guiding and controlling public education starting at the earliest age possible, dividing the population into communities -and even into “minorities”- to rule over them (this tactic is practical even within companies in the work world), creating instability and wars that pit people against each other, to name but a few…

All of these strategies (the “psychological fences” of society) have the simple aim of creating “productive individuals” for society. It’s thus easy to understand why people are only given the minimum knowledge that society wants them to have, sufficient for them to enter the job market and, in the best-case scenario, “grab onto” the ladder of “social climbing”, ultimately becoming a good consumer : they join the never-ending race of competition and credit, with their sights set on consuming more. They enter into a mercantile society, driving each person to adopt consumerism as their way of life, the farthest thing possible from any sense of spirituality, where existing means possessing, and “being” becomes “having”.

Society fights against those who, despite all of this, pursue the path of individuation : marginalization, various forms of “modern persecution” (such as legal or financial pressure, a wall of silence that creates pressure to integrate, or simply excessive conformity at every level, “well-meaning and well-thinking” as an obligatory way of life), in short, a diverse array of social sanctions… And unfortunately, this social pressure is extremely effective if the individual does not have solid foundations to rest on, especially in terms of independence, both physical and financial; few people dare to move against the current.

All of this often leads unavoidably to some form of solitude, which Jung evokes in his writing. And that is something that not everyone is ready to endure… This can all even lead to social persecution, which may not necessarily be conscious, but which may be the result of unconscious social, cultural, or religious pressure from the community.

Nevertheless, those individuals who do brave all of these difficulties are called upon to become what Rudhyar has called “seeds” (the “seed man”)… Everyone has an innate ability to make this choice, and no one can make it for you.

Kunkel added on to Jung’s warning, even mentioning a “purgatory of depth psychology” :

“No one should be pressured to enter into this whirlwind of creativity and spirituality unless there is some sort of urgent need. If you can stay where you are, do it. Curiosity, scientific research, and moral duty give you neither the right nor the option of entering into the purgatory of depth psychology.”

For Kunkel, in this process, it’s necessary from a religious standpoint to believe in or to sense the existence of an invisible order and to have the desire to harmonize with it.
Next, we must be tolerant towards God and accept to see him as he wishes “to be seen”, not as we would wish to see him. We must give him the chance to teach us something new about himself.

From a psychological point of view, to initiate the process of individuation we need to have a certain amount of internal suffering in us, and the desire to change the inner structure of our being in a deep, lasting way.
There is no rush; we first need to prepare ourselves internally, continuously, and simply wait for the right time to come, a few years later if necessary. Nothing is urgent, and nothing is imperative. To each their own pace : it’s never too late.

In today’s age of “glitz and glamor”, and general decline of modern Western civilization, the ideas presented above are not particularly popular.

If you are on the path of individuation…

Contemporary authors, psychiatrists, and philosophers, like the mystics and prophets of ancient times, have warned us over and over again to be cautious when embarking upon the evolution of our consciousness. What is the reason for these warnings ?

As we have seen, at the beginning of our individuation, all of our unconscious energies tend to be liberated. All that resides within us, both good and bad, is usually stirred in the process. We cause both our Shadow and our light to emerge.
It’s a process of metamorphosis with no turning back (Pluto) : once the door of the unconscious has been opened we can only move forward, and what has been will never be the same.

To begin to analyze one’s Birth chart is to take a step onto the path of individuation.
Once our astrological analysis has begun, everything that our birth chart tells us is greatly emphasized, and we discover some of our deeper layers. We also come face to face with fear, and we must increasingly express what we “potentially” truly are in all areas of our life.

We must never forget to take these considerations into account, because stepping onto this path without being ready or without being aware of the processes that come into play can lead to both an internal psychological disaster and external failures in life.
For those who are on the path of individuation and whom the universal spirit has helped at each step, you will be asked in the end : what have you done of my help ? What have you accomplished ?
This is why the sages warned us…

Astrological collection :

All of Jung’s works speak of individuation, either directly or indirectly.
All of the works of psychological or humanistic astrologers such as Dane Rudhyar, Alexandre Ruperti, André Barbault, and Liz Greene are also useful to study.
The subject of individuation has so many other ramifications that it’s impossible to fully cover in a single article here.