Ancient Deities and New Meanings: The Role of Myths in Twentieth-Century Astrology

Abstract

This paper examines a peculiar notion of divinity: the observation that authors of twentieth century astrology books recount myths of ancient Greek deities. These old stories seem to contradict the often cited ‘new’ psychological nature of Western astrology since the 1920s following the influence of C. G. Jung’s psychology. On a larger scale, this observation has the potential to blur the boundaries between so-called ‘traditional’ and ‘psychological’ astrology. And yet astrological authors had their reasons for including Greek mythology in their books. The task of this paper is to flesh out the role that ancient deities play in – putatively – new astrological concepts using examples of the German astrologer Olga von Ungern-Sternberg (1895-1997).