Program:  The Pantheon of Planetary Archetypes: A Lecture with Richard Tarnas

Friday, September 25, 2026, 7:30PM - 9:00PM EST

This program WILL BE RECORDED.

In Friday’s lecture, I will offer an overview and in Saturday’s workshop a deep dive into the 10 fundamental planetary archetypes that all Jungians, perhaps everyone, should have a basic understanding of. We will describe the great luminaries, the Sun and Moon, including how Sun and Moon have their feminine and masculine expressions and how both live in all of us. Then we will discuss the five planets known to the ancients—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. And finally, those three outer planets discovered by telescope in the modern era —Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto—for which we have both the most evidence and unanimous consensus among astrologers as to their archetypal meanings. 

Of the many archetypes that Jung recognized as informing the psychic life of his patients, those he found in the astrological tradition seemed to him especially significant, as reflecting timeless structures in the deep collective psyche. He drew on their meanings throughout his career and spoke repeatedly of the insights rendered by studying the birth charts and transits of his patients. Indeed, he suggested that it was the modern negation of this level of symbolic knowledge in our era that forced the need for the very existence of psychology.

Since the stars have fallen from heaven and our highest symbols have paled, a secret life holds sway in the unconscious. That is why we have psychology today, and why we speak of the unconscious. All this would be quite superfluous in an age or culture that possessed symbols.

Being familiar with the profound archetypal meanings associated with the Sun, Moon, and planets is invaluable for everyone interested in depth psychology and self-understanding. Because they are so universal in nature, as soon as each planet’s archetypal character and range of major expressions is presented, we quickly tend to recognize them as familiar realities in our lives.

Central to this weekend’s presentation, of course, is our understanding—or at least our glimpsing the mystery of—the very nature of archetypes, and how our always-evolving level of self-awareness and agency can play an essential role in how these powerful forces and complexes are enacted in our lives.

In Friday’s lecture, I will describe each of the 10 major planetary archetypes of the astrological pantheon, setting out the essential features of each. We will also explore the richly iridescent range of potential expressions that each archetypal principle can take. While in contemporary astronomy, the names of the planets reflect specific Greco-Roman deities of the Western tradition, the ultimately universal and cross-cultural character of the archetypes associated with the planets fully transcends any specific deities or cultural mythology. Rather, those archetypes are variously inflected through those deities and mythologies, shaped by the particular social and cultural paradigms informing the myths. In the same way, of course, no single person’s embodiment of any archetype represents the full multivalent amplitude of that universal principle, but rather enacts it in specific ways affected by many other factors—including our level of self-awareness and personal agency.

Prices:

Non-Members - $41.00/ticket

Individual Members - $34.00/ticket

Senior 65+ Members - $29.00/ticket

Student Members - $13.00/ticket

Richard Tarnas is professor emeritus of cultural history and psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He has taught courses in the history of ideas, archetypal studies, depth psychology, and religious evolution. He has also frequently lectured on archetypal studies and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute and was formerly the director of programs and education at Esalen Institute. He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern widely used in universities. His second book, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network and is the basis for the just released 10-episode documentary series "The Changing of the Gods". He is a past president of the International Transpersonal Association and long served on the Board of Governors for the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco.

DETAILS OF THE PROGRAM:

RECORDINGS:  The recording will be sent out 24-48 hours after the session has concluded. You will have 14 days to watch the recording.  

ZOOM LINK: The Zoom link can be found in your registration confirmation email. They will also be shared about 24 hours before the program start time and one hour before the program starts. Registration closes before Zoom links are shared. If you do not receive your link 24 hours in advance, please reach out asap directly to support@jung.org.

CANCELLATION: You may cancel your registration up to 1 week prior to the program.

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