Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, drew up a natal chart for every new patient. This statement is often read as an exaggeration. It isn't. Jung literally did it — it's described in his letters, discussed in several of his works, and confirmed by his secretary Aniela Jaffé in „Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (1962). For one of the most serious psychologists of the 20th century — a man whose ideas on introversion/extraversion, archetypes, the collective unconscious, and complexes form the foundation of all modern psychotherapy — astrology was not a hobby. It was a professional tool.
Here's why this matters. When a modern skeptic dismisses astrology as „pseudoscience”, they usually mean a specific form of it: newspaper horoscopes, superficial zodiac descriptions, cheap prophetic cynicism. And they are right to dismiss it in that form. But this isn't the astrology Jung studied. He studied something else — the structure of human experience, encoded in the oldest symbolic language humanity has created. And for forty years — from the early 1910s until his death in 1961 — he accumulated evidence that this ancient system describes something real about the human psyche.
This article answers the question why. Why did Jung — a thinker of Einstein's caliber in an adjacent field — engage with a system that his psychoanalytic colleagues considered absurd? What did he see there that they missed? And what did modern psychological astrology inherit from his thinking? This is a more serious topic than standard astrological articles on the Bulgarian internet. The goal is to give you an accurate, biographically and philosophically grounded perspective on one of the most important questions regarding astrology's legitimacy as a psychological tool. Astrology: Myth or Reality?
Why the Most Serious Psychologist of the 20th Century Took Astrology Seriously
The short answer to the title's question is this: Jung did not take astrology seriously in the sense of „believing that the stars rule our lives”. He never believed that, and regularly criticized it publicly. He took it seriously in a completely different sense — as a system of symbols that humanity had developed over millennia, and which describes the structure of human experience in a way no other system does. This distinction is key. Without it, all subsequent reading will remain confused.
The biographical context: Jung became interested in astrology around 1911 — at a time when he had already developed the basic concepts of his psychology (the association test, the theory of complexes), but had not yet reached his mature theory of archetypes. His initial interest was curious and experimental. He tested whether astrological descriptions matched his independent psychological observations of patients. And — to his own surprise — he often found remarkable coincidences.
In a letter to his student and friend, the Indian sinologist Richard Wilhelm, in 1929, Jung wrote: „I saw that astrology describes exactly the same psychological structures that I encounter in my work with patients. I am not saying that it is true, in the sense that physics is true. I am saying that it describes something real — structures of the psyche that exist regardless of whether we scientifically acknowledge them or not.”
Around the 1930s, Jung began to speak about astrology publicly, in his lectures and letters. And something important happened here. He made a distinction between astrology as a prediction of the future and astrology as a description of the psyche. The first — he rejected. The second — he accepted and studied in depth. This distinction defined the entire subsequent century of psychological astrology.
In „Memories, Dreams, Reflections” — the autobiography he dictated towards the end of his life — Jung formulated it thus: „Perhaps it has happened to you that some skilled astrologer calmly told you your whole life according to the horoscope. And it turned out to be true. This would not be possible if everything were not predetermined and if it were not in synchronicity with the position of the stars.”
This sentence is strategically important. Jung does not say that the stars cause your life. He says that your life corresponds to the position of the stars in a way that seems meaningful. This is an analogous relationship, not a causal one. And it is precisely this analogous relationship that he would call synchronicity.
Why did this topic attract him so deeply? Because it answered a question he had asked throughout his career — „how much of the human psyche is individual, and how much is collective?”. Freud's standard psychoanalysis assumes that everything psychological derives from individual experience — childhood, parents, personal wounds. Jung disagreed. He saw patterns in his patients that could not be explained by their individual history — they came from somewhere deeper. This was the beginning of his theory of the collective unconscious and archetypes.
And here, astrology entered as a unique tool. Because astrology literally describes human experience through universal principles that apply to all people regardless of their individual history. A Sun-Saturn square works similarly for someone born in Sofia in 1985 and someone born in Tokyo in 1850. This is a collective structure, precisely what Jung was looking for.
In other words — Jung did not seek out astrology. It turned out to be the oldest empirical record of precisely the collective structure he was looking for. And once he recognized it, he could not ignore it.
The Patient's Natal Chart: A Little-Known Practice
Now, the practical side. And this is where standard perceptions of Jung prove to be shallower than reality. In Zurich, at his clinic in Küsnacht, Jung established a routine for admitting new patients. The first thing he requested from them was birth data — precise date, time, and place of birth. With this data, he would draw up a natal chart before the first session.
Why? In a letter to the American astrologer B.V. Raman in 1947, he explained: „I often find that the natal chart gives me a key to the patient's character that would otherwise take me weeks of psychoanalysis. This does not mean I skip the therapeutic work. It means I start better prepared.”
This practice has two aspects worth noting.
First — diagnostic. Jung used the natal chart as a hypothesis for the patient's psychological structure. „This person has a Sun-Saturn square — probably has a chronic fear of their own authority.” „This woman has a Moon-Pluto opposition — probably has deep emotional wounds from her mother.” He did not unconditionally accept these hypotheses. He tested them in his work and corrected them according to reality. But they gave him an initial framework for understanding.
Second — prognostic. Jung used transits (the current movements of planets relative to the natal chart) as a warning for critical periods in patients' lives. „Saturn will transit your Sun over the next two years — I expect you will experience a serious identity crisis, regarding work or authority.” This was not prophecy. It was a hypothesis he formulated to be better prepared for work during the crisis period.
Anneliese Ammon-Gaynoth, who worked at his clinic in the late 1950s, describes in her memoirs that Jung always kept the patient's natal chart open in front of him during therapeutic sessions. „Sometimes he would fall silent mid-conversation, open the book of ephemerides, check something, and nod quietly. He said nothing to the patient. But one could see that he understood them more accurately.”
This is important for understanding Jung's position on astrology. He did not use it instead of psychotherapy. He used it in addition to psychotherapy — as a tool for faster and more accurate understanding. This is the same position that modern psychological astrologers maintain.
And a nuance: Jung never described astrology to his patients publicly. He considered it a confidential tool between the astrologer-psychotherapist and the patient. He never published specific cases with astrological interpretations. This distinction — private use versus public recognition — explains why many readers of Jung are unaware of his attitude toward astrology.
Synchronicity: The Acausal Connecting Principle
Here we arrive at the central concept of all Jungian astrology. And here, understanding becomes conceptually difficult, so I will try to make it accessible. Standard Western scientific thought recognizes one type of connection between events — the causal. „A causes B”. Pushing the cup makes it fall. Fire burns wood. A mother gives birth to a child. Causality is the basis of all physical science since the 17th century.
Jung, however, noticed that in working with patients, events often occurred that were obviously related, but not causally connected. The classic example he describes in „Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle” (1952) is the case of the scarab.
One of his patients dreamed that she received a golden scarab. When she recounted the dream to him in the next session, a golden-green beetle (one of the subspecies of the Scarabaeidae family) literally flew into the window and landed on Jung's hand. Jung took it and showed it to the patient with the words, „Here is your scarab.” This moment, in his own words, „pierced her rational defenses” and opened the way for deep therapeutic work.
Now. What do the dream and the beetle have in common?
Causally — nothing. The dream does not cause the beetle. The beetle does not cause the dream. They are two independent events with no physical connection between them. Yet they are connected — connected by meaning, by archetypal theme, by internal structure.
Jung called this type of connection synchronicity. His definition is: „a meaningful coincidence between an inner psychic state and an outer physical event that are not causally connected”. Important — „meaningful”. Synchronicity is not chance. It is not a miracle. It is not magic. It is archetypal, meaning it reflects a common structure behind separate events.
And here comes the connection to astrology.
Astrology literally works through synchronicity. When you are born at a moment when Venus conjuncts Pluto in your natal chart — neither Venus nor Pluto cause this characteristic of yours. They are simply synchronous with it. The two events — the astronomical position and your character — happen simultaneously, and are connected by meaning, not by causality. Just like the dream and the beetle.
This is radical. Because it makes astrology compatible with physics. The skeptic who says „stars cannot influence us from millions of kilometers away”, is absolutely right. Stars do not influence. They simply synchronize — they and you are manifestations of the same deeper structure.
In „Synchronicity”, Jung compares this structure to „acausal orderedness” — similar to mathematical laws, which do not cause anything, but describe structural truths. π (3.14159...) does not cause circles to have this ratio between circumference and diameter. π describes this structure. Similarly — astrological principles do not cause your character. They describe the structure in which your character exists.
This positions astrology not as „pseudoscience”, but as a linguistic tool for describing structures that exist independently of causality. This is a more serious and philosophically grounded position than most popular defenses of astrology.
The 483 Couples Experiment
And now for one of the least known stories. In „Synchronicity”, Jung describes a specific experiment he conducted to test whether astrology „works” empirically.
In 1948-1949, with the help of his colleague Liliane Frey-Rohn, Jung collected data for 483 married couples — a total of 966 natal charts. He chose this topic because classical astrological theory claims that there should be specific aspects between spouses — especially one's Sun conjuncting the other's Moon, or a Sun-Sun conjunction, or a Moon-Moon conjunction.
Jung's hypothesis was simple: if astrology describes something real, these aspects should appear more frequently in real married couples than in randomly selected pairs.
The results: Jung observed that:
- In 180 out of 483 couples, there was a Sun-Moon conjunction (about 37%)
- In 220 out of 483 couples, there was a Sun-Sun conjunction (about 46%)
- In 180 out of 483 couples, there was a Moon-Moon conjunction (about 37%)
For all three classical aspects of marriage, the results were higher than randomly expected. Jung calculated that the probability of this occurring by chance was extremely low.
But here's where it gets interesting. After publishing the results, Jung himself challenged his own experiment. In later letters, he wrote that the statistical method he had used was incorrect, and that the results were probably „better than chance would produce, but not good enough to prove astrology”. This is exceptional scientific intellectual honesty — to publish an experiment and then criticize your own conclusions.
Why is this important? Because it shows how Jung approached astrology. Not as a „believer” seeking confirmation. But as a scientist testing a hypothesis and accepting, if necessary, that the results were not conclusive. And yet — despite the self-criticism — he never rejected astrology. Because for him, it described synchronicity, not causality, and synchronicity cannot be tested by standard statistical methods.
This experiment is little known on the Bulgarian internet but is a central moment in the history of psychological astrology. It shows how a serious thinker can investigate astrology without falling into either naive acceptance or flat skepticism.
Archetypes and Planets: The Common Structure
Now for the central conceptual connection. Jung observed that the archetypes from the collective unconscious and the planetary principles from astrology describe the same structures.
What is an archetype? In Jungian psychology, an archetype is a universal psychic pattern that all people carry in their subconscious — regardless of individual biography, culture, or time of life. Archetypes are structural forms, not specific contents. The Mother is not a specific person, but an archetypal form expressed through all mothers. The Wise Old Man is not a particular philosopher, but a form manifested in all wise men. And so on.
Jung identified dozens of archetypes, but several are central — Mother, Father, Child, Wise Old Man, Shadow, Anima/Animus, Self, Hero, Trickster, Great Mother, Maiden. Each has its own structure, functions, and characteristic dynamics.
And here is the strategic insight: Jung noticed that planetary principles in astrology describe the same archetypes. Not approximately. Exactly.
The Moon in astrology describes the Mother, nurturing, sensibility, protection, domesticity. In Jungian psychology, the Mother archetype describes the same principles. Not approximately — the same.
Saturn in astrology describes the Wise Old Man, authority, limitation, time, discipline. The Jungian archetype Wise Old Man describes the same principles.
The Sun in astrology describes the Self, identity, the ego's center. The Jungian archetype Self describes the central integrating function of the psyche.
Venus in astrology describes the Anima in the male psyche — the inner feminine side, attraction, aesthetics. Venus literally encodes Jung's Anima archetype.
Mars in astrology describes the Animus in the female psyche — the inner masculine side, activity, fury. Mars literally encodes Jung's Animus archetype.
This is not a coincidence. And it's not a result of Jung „bringing” astrology into his psychology. Historical chronology shows the opposite — Jung first identified archetypes through work with patients and dreams, and then noticed that astrology described the same structures. The two systems arrived at the same insights through different paths.
And this, for Jung, is the strongest evidence for the reality of the collective unconscious. If two independent systems — one born of modern psychotherapy, the other thousands of years old — describe the same structures of the psyche, then these structures exist. They are not an invention of either system. They describe something that is.
This is the thesis that underpins all modern psychological astrology. Dane Rudhyar, Stephen Arroyo, Liz Greene, Howard Sasportas, Bill Tierney, Melanie Reinhart — all derive from this Jungian idea and develop it in various ways over the subsequent decades.
„Aion” and Astrological Ages
And here we come to Jung's boldest astrological thesis. In „Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self” (1951) — one of his last major books — he applied the astrological concept of ages to all of human history.
What is an age? In astrology, the great year is a period of about 25,920 years, during which the Earth makes a slow precessional rotation. This rotation divides into 12 ages of about 2160 years each. Each age is associated with a specific zodiac sign and carries its archetypal themes.
According to astrological tradition, the Age of Aries was from about 2000 BCE to about the first millennium BCE — the era of aggressive warrior-heroes (Homeric epics, Judean kings, Julius Caesar). The Age of Pisces was from about 0 CE to about the year 2000 — the era of Christianity, the messianic idea, sacrifice, and spiritual redemption. The Age of Aquarius, which we are now entering, brings themes of collective freedom, technology, networked connectivity, and a transition from the individual to the collective.
Jung accepted this astrological structure as an explanatory framework for all human cultural history. In „Aion”, he wrote: „The aeon of Pisces represents the synchronistic phenomenon accompanying the two-thousand-year development of the Christian spirit.” This is a radical statement. It does not say that Christianity caused the Age of Pisces. It does not say that the Age of Pisces caused Christianity. It says that the two are synchronous manifestations of the same deeper structure — a structure of the human collective psyche that manifests * simultaneously* in celestial geometry and cultural history.
This is an application of synchronicity to a historical scale. And it makes astrology significant for understanding all human civilization, not just individual psychotherapy.
Jung predicted that the transition from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius will bring a collective crisis — a breakdown of old religious and social structures, and a new stage of the collective unconscious. His book „Aion” was written in the mid-20th century, and many of his predictions for this transition — the individualization of religious experience, the dismantling of hierarchical structures, increasing alienation, the need for new forms of collectivity — sound extremely relevant today.
What Modern Astrology Inherited from Jung
Jung died in 1961. What did astrology inherit from him? Before Jung, Western astrology was predominantly prognostic — astrologers predicted events, described destinies, and provided answers to specific questions about the future. This was the style of medieval and Renaissance astrology, which continued until the early 20th century.
After Jung, psychological astrology was born — a school that adopted all his insights and applied them to the natal chart. This school rejects prediction as a central goal and embraces self-knowledge as astrology's primary function. It views the natal chart not as „fate”, but as a structure of the psyche — a map of the archetypes that constitute your unique personality.
The first major representative of this school is Dane Rudhyar. In „The Astrology of Personality” (1936) — published while Jung was still alive and directly inspired by him — Rudhyar declared humanistic astrology. It is based on the thesis that the natal chart describes the direction of psychological development, not fate. The Sun is the goal of individuation. The Moon is the starting point. Saturn is the necessary resistance. And so on. All of this is directly Jungian.
Then came Stephen Arroyo — „Astrology, Psychology and the Four Elements” (1975), „Astrology, Karma & Transformation” (1978), „Relationships and Life Cycles” (1979). Arroyo translated Jungian psychology into practical astrological tools. His work is central to modern psychological astrology.
Simultaneously — Liz Greene, who founded the London Centre for Psychological Astrology in 1981, literally as a „Jungian school of astrology”. Her books — „Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil” (1976), „Relating” (1977), „The Astrological Neptune” (1996) — translated Jungian theory into detailed astrological practice. The London Centre, along with her colleagues Howard Sasportas („The Twelve Houses”, 1985) and Melanie Reinhart („Chiron and the Healing Journey” Chiron and the Healing Journey, 1989), became the epicenter of psychological astrology for the entire Western world.
And finally — Bill Tierney, „Dynamics of Aspect Analysis” (1983), who translated Jung's theory of integrating opposites into a detailed theory of astrological aspects. According to Tierney, aspects are not „good” or „bad” — they are „easy” or „difficult”, and the difficult ones are more important for development, just as in Jungian individuation.
All these authors — without exception — derive directly from Jung. They are his students, his followers, his heirs. Without him, their work would not have been possible.
And that, ultimately, is the answer to the question in this article's title. Jung studied astrology because in it he saw the oldest and most accurate empirical record of what he sought his entire life — the structure of the collective psyche. He did not want to „save” astrology. He wanted to use it to understand human experience. The result — the entire century of psychological astrology that inherited it — is his indirect gift. Explore Synastry: The Astrology of Relationships
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Jung really believe in astrology?
It depends on what you mean by „believed”. He did not believe that the stars cause our lives — that would be naive and contradict physics. He did believe, however, that astrology describes real structures of the human psyche, and that its insights are worth serious study. This is a more nuanced position than „I believe” or „I don't believe”. It's more accurate to say that he recognized astrology as a useful symbolic language for describing the psyche.
What is the difference between synchronicity and causality?
Causality is „A causes B” — the standard scientific connection between events. Synchronicity is „A and B are related in meaning, but not causally”. The dream of the scarab and the appearance of the beetle in the window are synchronous — related by an archetypal theme — but not causal. Jung argued that synchronicity is the second fundamental principle by which events are connected in our world, and that science insufficiently recognizes it.
How to read a natal chart Jungian-style?
By recognizing archetypes. Look at the Sun — what archetype of the Self does it describe in your case? Look at the Moon — what archetype of the Mother operates in your unconscious? Look at Saturn — what authority, limitation, or Wise Old Man manifests in your life? This is a deeper reading than a ready-made recipe like „you are a Sun in Leo, therefore you are...”. It requires knowledge of Jungian psychology, and is therefore more difficult, but also more useful.
Did Jung write a whole book about astrology?
No. He never wrote a separate work solely on astrology. He mentions it in numerous letters, lectures, and in certain chapters of his major books — especially in „Synchronicity” (1952) and „Aion” (1951). For the reader who wants to study Jung and astrology together, the best initial recommendation is „Synchronicity” — it contains the experiment with couples and the theoretical framework. Then „Aion” for the astrological ages. And „Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (the autobiography) for his personal context.
Which modern astrologers are most Jungian-oriented?
Liz Greene („Saturn”, „Relating”), Stephen Arroyo („Astrology, Psychology and the Four Elements”), Dane Rudhyar („The Astrology of Personality”), Howard Sasportas („The Twelve Houses”), Melanie Reinhart („Chiron and the Healing Journey”). All of them come from the London Centre for Psychological Astrology or close circles, and all work literally in the Jungian tradition. This is the standard of serious modern psychological astrology.