Astrology and Depth Psychology
Updated: 13 hours ago
I am not an astrologer, but astrology has become part of the wider spiritual, magical and psychological landscape through which I think about psyche and meaning.
Over the years I have become increasingly familiar with its language, partly because it weaves through so many of the traditions and ideas that interest me. Depth psychology, archetypal thinking, magic and spirituality all raise questions about correspondence, symbolism and whether the boundaries we ordinarily place between psyche and world are quite as secure as they appear.
I remain open to astrology, at least in particular forms, without feeling any need to arrive at a definitive position on what it is or how it works. What interests me considerably less are approaches that become overly predictive or deterministic, where the chart is treated as though it contains a fixed account of what somebody is or what will happen to them.
Mark has used a useful analogy here: a rat born in a hospital might conceivably share precisely the same astrological chart as a baby born there at the same moment, but clearly they will not live the same life. The chart cannot therefore be separated from the particular being, circumstances and life through which it is expressed.
There is something similar in the way dreams are sometimes approached. You dreamed this, therefore it means that. For me, this closes down precisely what makes symbolic material valuable. A dream, image or astrological chart may invite interpretation, but it does not become exhausted by an interpretive formula.
It is within this wider context that I have become interested in the work of psychotherapist and astrologer Mark Jones.
The Soul Speaks
I can highly recommend Mark’s The Soul Speaks: The Therapeutic Potential of Astrology as a readable and engaging introduction to some of the connections between astrology, psychotherapy and depth psychology.
The book includes chapters on therapeutic astrology, counselling skills for astrologers, Saturn and soul psychology. What interests me particularly is that astrology appears within a much broader psychological and spiritual understanding rather than as a self-contained system for making predictions.
Astrology can of course be approached in many ways. I am not persuaded by the versions of astrology which emphasise personality types, or simply being told what will happen. What I feel is profound can be discovered through its symbolic and imaginal qualities, and in the possibility that the relationship between psyche and cosmos may be richer than a strictly materialist account allows.
In this respect it can sit quite naturally alongside depth psychology. Dreams, images, myths and synchronicities do not usually become meaningful because someone finally translates them into a fixed answer. Their value often lies in the relationships and associations they open.
An astrological chart can be approached in a similar spirit, as an image around which reflection takes place rather than an instruction manual for a life.
Nor do I feel a particular need to reduce astrology to metaphor in order to make it respectable. I remain open to the possibility that astrological correspondence might reveal something about reality that our usual divisions between inner and outer, psyche and world, do not adequately describe.
A friendship and shared enquiry
Mark is a friend, and I have had the pleasure of helping at several of the masterclasses he has held at his home in South Wales over the past few years, most recently his 2025 Sacred Marriage masterclass. These are truly special occassions, where around fifteen participants from around the world will gather for five days of engagement with Mark's unique psycho-spiritual vision, through his fluent and energised teaching style, with plenty of time for social interaction and visits to historically significant locations nearby.
He is an extremely knowledgeable and experienced psychotherapist as well as an astrologer, and his dedication to spiritual life is an important part of the particular synthesis he has developed.
Despite knowing comparatively little astrology myself, there is rarely a point during Mark’s presentations where I feel particularly lost. His teaching is so thoroughly informed by depth psychology and spiritual traditions, which are much more familiar ground for me, that the astrological material enters into a wider conversation I already recognise.
I also appreciate the absence of unnecessary mystification. Esoteric knowledge can sometimes acquire an atmosphere in which obscurity itself begins to signify depth. Mark is capable of speaking about complex material very lucidly.
Astrology as a relational practice
One of the aspects of Mark’s approach that interests me most is his understanding of the astrological consultation as a relational space, what he has described as a counselling dynamic.
The astrologer is therefore not positioned as an authority dispensing secret knowledge about another person’s destiny. The chart enters into a conversation in which meaning can be explored together.
This has an obvious resonance with my own experience of Art Psychotherapy. An image made during therapy is not something I stand outside and decode for somebody else. Its meaning develops through attention to the image, the person who made it and the relationship in which it is being encountered.
There can be considerable expertise involved, but expertise does not remove the need for humility before the material.
An astrological chart can be approached in something of the same way. Whatever knowledge an astrologer brings, the person whose life is represented by the chart remains an active participant in discovering what it might mean.
Psyche and cosmos
One of the themes from Mark’s teaching that has stayed with me concerns the extraordinary attention human beings have paid to the heavens for millennia.
The movements of planets and stars have been watched in relation to seasons, earthly events and human lives with extraordinary care. Whatever conclusions we eventually draw about astrology, there is something compelling to me about this sustained relationship between human beings, Earth and sky.
It represents a way of inhabiting a cosmos rather than merely occupying a planet.
I am wary of forms of astrology that become reductively predictive, but I am equally unconvinced by the ease with which the whole subject can be dismissed through the strongly rationalist and materialist assumptions that dominate much contemporary thought.
Such dismissal often decides the limits of reality before the enquiry has even begun.
Jung is obviously relevant here. His work repeatedly unsettles a neat division between psyche and world, while synchronicity gives us a language for meaningful correspondence that does not depend upon conventional ideas of cause and effect.
Astrology inhabits precisely this uncertain territory, which I find more interesting than either unquestioning belief or automatic dismissal.
A personal openness
Part of the reason astrology continues to interest me is that it belongs within a wider orientation in my life.
I am open to magical worldviews, archetypal patterns and synchronicity, and to the possibility that reality exceeds the explanatory systems through which we ordinarily try to contain it. None of this requires accepting every claim made in the name of astrology, spirituality or magic. It does require a willingness to encounter something before deciding too quickly what it is permitted to be.
There is also a difference between explaining something and understanding it. An explanation can sometimes succeed principally by removing the very qualities of meaning, relationship and wonder that made the experience significant in the first place.
Astrology interests me partly because, at its best, it resists that reduction. It proposes that a human life might participate in patterns larger than the individual personality.
That possibility sits comfortably beside many of the other things I have written about: Jung’s sense of a psyche extending beyond the bounded individual, Hillman’s insistence that we exist within psyche, the symbolic life of images, and the relationship between spiritual experience and the living world.
I do not need astrology to provide me with final answers to find that possibility worth taking seriously.
Further exploration
For anyone interested in Mark’s work, his website contains information about his teaching as well as videos, podcasts and other material.
This brief reflection is not intended as an argument for astrology, nor as an attempt to explain how or why it might work. It is simply an acknowledgement that astrology belongs within the wider landscape of ideas and experiences that have shaped my understanding of psyche.
Its symbolic language places it naturally alongside image and myth. Its attention to correspondence leads towards Jung and synchronicity. Its relationship with spiritual and magical traditions opens into other questions about what kind of world we believe ourselves to inhabit.
For me, those connections are reason enough to remain curious.
Andrew Phillips is a psychotherapist and artist in Newport, south Wales, UK.
Psychotherapy - Online for adults across the UK.
Art - Painting and work on paper exploring landscape and the numinous.
Consultations - For individuals (UK + internationally) who would like to discuss art, nature, spirituality, depth psychology, or work and vocation.
The Ancient Inn - Conversations for artists and creatives in the UK and internationally, with Dean Melbourne.
You are welcome to contact me regarding any aspect of my work, using the form below.
