This document discusses oppositions between different modes of thinking and perceiving truth. It presents a model where empiric thinking is opposed to intuitive feeling. Empiric thinking seeks truth through objective facts and verification, while intuitive feeling sees truth as more subjective based on personal belief and faith. This reflects the divide between religion and science in their different quests for truth. The document suggests these opposing modes can work together to resolve the conundrum of defining truth, with the center representing reconciliation between the elements.

1. Oppositions active in the
Anima Mundi
The Philosopher’s Stone.
Oppositions essential to the functioning of the
brain cause conflict in society. Understanding
these natural oppositions will allow us to utilise
them positively and construct a more
enlightened world. Yippee!
Astrologers familiar with ancient systems will recognise the
opposing signs in this model are semi-sextile therefore ‘disjoint’
on the Zodiac.

2. These are the Opposites on the ZODIAC
On the Zodiac positive signs
oppose positive signs, negative Mutable Water
opposes negative, cardinal
opposes cardinal, and fixed
opposes fixed. Cardinal
Fire
-
+
Airy Libra seeks justice so
diligently she provokes war (the +
Goddess Athena was the
goddess of war as well as
- Cardinal Air
justice). Meanwhile the fiery Mutable Earth
Aries warrior fights for peace.
Earthy Virgo is anxiously aware
of Pisces chaos whereas
watery Pisces has a quite Virginal antipathy of anything crude.
On the Zodiac Water opposes Earth, and Air opposes Fire. Since Wet Earth is
fertile (sensual feeling), and Fire’s fuel is oxygen (intuitive thinking) you can see the
opposing signs have qualities that work together.

3. Liz Greene introduced me to Jung’s book Aion in 2005. Prior to this I had no idea
that the model in her book Relating, within which the new model was discovered in
1984, had such an exalted provenance.
AION is a Greek
word, it means
AGE.
How „THE SELF‟ is expressed in the experience of the individual?
And: The psychological significance of the Christian Era.

4. Here are some quotes from Aion.
‘The lapis (the philosopher’s stone)
consists of the four elements or has
to be put together from them’.
Morienus, from Tractatus Aureus, Aion,
p 236-237.
‘And as a man is made up of four
elements, so also is the stone, and
so it is dug out of man, and thou are
its ore’. Ibid, p. 168.
‘It is what is called ultimo exquadra circulae, the square in the circle,
or the circle in the square. It is an age-old symbol that goes right
back to the pre-history of man. It is all over the earth and it either
expresses the deity or the self;’
Conversations with Carl Jung and Reactions from Ernest Jones. Richard I.
Evans. Publisher: D. Van Nostrand Company. Princeton, NJ. 1964.

5. And here is Liz’s diagram from which I decided the positioning of
signs on the Anima Mundi. On the brain model empiric-thinking,
Air-Earth, is at the top.
Greene, L, Relating; An Astrological Guide to Living with Others on a Small Planet,
UK, Thorsons Publishers Ltd, 1977.

6. Just to remind you, this is how the astrological archetypes are arranged
when this model is applied to the brain.
Earth Air
Right Left Empiric-thinking Left Right
Intuitive-feeling
Water Fire

7. THE OPPOSITIONS
Empiric-thinking
Sensual-feeling Intuitive-thinking
Intuitive-feeling

8. And here are the oppositions on the new model.
Earth Air
Water Fire

9. ‘Mostly Harmless’
The problem is that our egos have the run of
this world of the inner psyche with no empiric-thinking
restrictions imposed. Our awareness
wanders. We concentrate on certain areas at
the expense of others. Our culture actively
encourages absurdity as conceptual fashions
bias us in favour of one direction or another.
Our birth charts predispose us to imbalance.
Imbalance can of course be creative – think
hammer - but not when it‘s a tool in the
hands of an idiot.
The present bias is towards empiric-thinking.
It’s easy to ‘see’ why – business and science
produce wealth. intuitive-feeling
‘Mostly harmless’ is the entry on planet Earth
in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?
„Through the mixing of the four elements inequalities arose which caused
uncertainty and so necessitated decisions or acts of choice‟.
Paul Anton Lagarde, Clementina, from Aion, p. 56

10. I shall now apply a single word to each of the
signs of the Zodiac.
Of course each sign carries a world of
meanings but in this presentation, for the sake
of simplicity, I have chosen just one word.

11. The words I have chosen illustrate something about the
foundation significance of the specific astrological archetype.
Business Science
Practical Intellectual
Physical beauty Theoretical beauty
Death Birth
Mother Father
Mysticism Philosophy
Negative Signs Positive signs

12. COMPLEMENTARY CONNECTIONS
These words graphically display the complementary meaning held by paired signs.
‘Complementary’ means ‘to make complete’. Father without Mother is incomplete, etc.
Complements join the signs that share rulers on the old Ptolemaic Order.
Business WEALTH Science
Practical WORK Intellectual
Physical Beauty Theoretical Beauty
FORM
Death TIME Birth
Mother LIFE Father
Mysticism SOURCE Philosophy

13. Between Birth and Death, a connection I identified as representing passing
‘Time’, and Physical and Theoretical Beauty, which I have interpreted as ‘Form’,
is a point at which the lower and upper sections meet.
10 11
6 3
2 FORM 7
8 TIME 1
4 5
12 9

14. Familiar with the Hermann Minkowski space-time diagram I named this
central position ‘the present’.
FUTURE
‘the present’.
time
PAST
space

15. Back to the perspicacious ancients: ‘Reduce your stone to the four
elements, rectify and combine them into one, and you will have the whole
magistery. The one, to which the elements must be reduced, is the little
circle in the centre of this squared figure. It is the mediator making peace
between the elements’. Tractatus Aureus, Aion, p. 239
This is an IMPORTANT statement.

16. These ‘complementary connections’ also correlate
extraordinarily successfully with the meanings
carried by the lines of Yijing (I Ching) in
Hexagrams I and 2.
This is the subject of another presentation.

17. You can think of our conscious awareness as like the Sun
shining on the Earth. Although Sydney and London exist at the
same time in space the Sun can only shine on one city at a time.
When it is daytime in London it is night-time in Sydney. It is the
same with these oppositions on the new model.
Now we will view the oppositions one by one.
The first opposition I have chosen to think about is concerned
with our search for -
TRUTH
Always remember:
„… the little circle in the centre of this squared figure. It is the
mediator making peace between the elements’.

18. „Where “truth” or “true” is defined, it
will be to the effect of “that which is a Empiric Thinking
fact” or “that which is verifiable …‟
William J. Shields, Wikipedia, Truth.
TRUTH
On Faith and Truth …my faith does not
require another to believe it. My faith is
rooted in what I believe is the best path for
me, not for you. If we are all one as I believe,
then there is no right or wrong, for how can
one part of the whole be right and another
Intuitive Feeling part be wrong? Curtis G Schmitt.

19. Subjective truth vs. objective truth.
TRUTH
This is the religion/science divide. John Templeton has left a $1.6 million prize for
any scientists prepared to ‘broker a partnership’ between this warring pair’. (New
Scientist, 2 August, 2008, p. 52) Here the scientist opposes the mystic yet they are both on
the same quest: both have an imperative inner desire to resolve this conundrum.
Scientists seek ‘truth’ through empiric-thinking, earth/air. They explore a world that
can be seen, felt, and touched. They poke it and prod it, slice it, measure it and
weigh it. With Saturn’s help (the earthy side of empiric-thinking) scientist’s achieve
spectacular results - quantitative methodology has won collective respect. It has
brought rewards but it is clearly failing to answer our deepest needs.
With Jupiter’s involvement (Jupiter is the fire side of intuitive-feeling) the mystic
seeks answers through introspection. We are alive! This is an amazing fact.
Something, a mystery to the empiric-thinking self but clearly part of a greater whole,
is operating.
This enigmatic source is full of yearning. Without respect for its opposite this
position is responsible for a plethora of dangerous delusions.
So science is the enemy of religion and religion is the enemy of science. History
supplies us with endless well-documented examples. The Church vs. Galileo,
Evolution vs. Creationism.
Mysticism, when it unwisely attempts to commandeer the surety of empiric-thinking,
results in megalomania. Conversely, arrogantly discounting the enigmatic source
puts science on a course set to destroy our world.
Only respect for both methods of gaining information will supply us with an accurate
picture.

20. Empiric Thinking
TRUTH
Inconsequentiality
‘… to see the world and
The one, to which the
grasp it as paradoxical, we
elements must be
must break with our familiar
reduced, is the little
acceptance of it … and
circle in the centre of this
from the break we can learn
squared figure. It is the
nothing but the unmotivated
mediator making peace
upsurge of the world’.
between the elements’. Merleau Ponty, The
Tractatus Aureus, Aion, p. 239
Phenomenology of Perception, xv.
„Philosophy is not the reflection
Relativism of a pure existing truth, but, like
art, the act of bringing, truth into
being‟. Ponty, Phenomenology of
Perception, xxii
Intuitive Feeling

21. ‘Opposites always entail each other, and can only be separated abstractly and
at the risk of upsetting the rhythm of life by treating them as really inseparable.
Enforcing order produces disorder. Attempts at overt control on behalf of one
half of the dyad at the expense the other half, whether such manipulations be
political or otherwise, simply makes things worse.’
Daodejing, Ames and Hall, p.168, 2003.
So to sum up … Both the mystic and the scientist are seeking truth but while the mystic has
faith in the idea that intuitive-feeling as ‘the way’ to find it, the scientist has concluded that
empiric-thinking - thinking with facts provided by the senses (which clearly requires
experiments carried out on the ’real’ physical world) - is the only reliable method. Either way
they both miss out if they do not give credence to the opposing side.
When Christian ideology ruled intuitive-feeling won, lately it has been the turn of science.
That either should win is a disaster because in both cases they fail. ….Indeed it can be
seen that the entailed opposite gains the upper hand. …
What about the little circle at the centre? Between Time and Form, is the upsurging ‘reality’
of the moment - the ‘absolutism’ of being here right now.
In terms of entailment this axis illustrates the discontinuity between ‘awake’ (Uranus is
called the awakener) and asleep (Neptune is the dreamer). You can’t be both at once.
Descartes said ‘I think therefore I am’. That’s OK as far as it goes. But this model points out
that I also sense, intuit, and feel therefore I am. Should anyone of these modus operandi be
excluded the I am is never going to get a grip on the total situation. …….

22. The next opposition we look at is
STRUCTURE

23. Empiric Thinking
Business
STRUCTURE
Religion
Intuitive Feeling

24. STRUCTURE Here we are looking at the opposition between the
Capricornian businessman and the Sagittarian philosopher. What use can the
businessman see in the student, pack on back, off to see the world?
Saturn, Capricorn’s ruling planet, stands for boundaries, for stones and bones, walls,
teeth and skin. The danger in Saturn is crystallisation. Capricornian/Saturnian
structures are necessary but are by nature inflexible. Secular law is cold and
unforgiving. It has literally ‘no give’. Yet Saturn ruled the Golden Age - civilization
depends on society following the rules. Imagine a city where nobody drives on the
correct side of the road and nobody stops for a red light.
Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, optimistic king of the gods. Sagittarius is flexible. The
philosopher seeks the structure in experience. The structure of moral law takes
account of subtleties: ethics are forever reviewable. Sagittarius is intuitive
‘knowledge’. The world is Sag’s oyster, a wonderful place promising adventure and
requiring exploration. The demands made by this position are grow, learn and expand.
Life is regarded as an adventure. The weakness is over-optimism and irresponsibility.
Juno/Hera, Jupiter’s consort, was not a happy wife.
When corrupted by its opposite this position produces fundamentalism.
The Government, the police, the Law Courts, these are Capricornian institutions. The
structure of Sag is ninth house. Universities were set up by the priesthood.
This is also the opposition between Fear (Saturn) and Greed (Jupiter). Perfect
structure, like truth, is in the middle.

25. ENDURANCE

26. Physical
Sensual-feeling
Beauty
Intuitive-thinking
ENDURANCE
Birth

27. ENDURANCE Sensual-feeling Taurus attempting to conserve
physical values opposes pioneering, intuitive-thinking creative Aries. Taurus is
concerned with safety, security, and dependability. Its ruling planet is Mother
Earth, its house the 2nd house of home.
Aries is spring. It is vibrant. It stands for beginnings when all is young and fresh
and full of potential. At its best it is progress through change. Its house is the 1st
house of birth.
I learnt about this opposition through a news broadcast. It described a conflict
between conservationists and the building of a new bypass.
A Taurus image is the oak tree. Taurus endures through strength and
persistence.
An Aries image is the warrior. Ruled by the planet Mars it is brimful of vitality,
courage and heroism. Every year it brings a new spring. Mars is intuitive-
thinking. It is made up of the elements Fire and Air: Fire feeds on oxygen.
Martian desire is hot.
Taurus, left to its own devises, in spite of its strength, could not endure. Its dark
side is ‘materialism’. Aries, like a military tank, left to its own devises would
carelessly destroy everything in its path. Its dark side is vandalism.
They are both necessary. Together they modify the expression of the other so
that life endures.

28. REGENERATION

29. Romantic
Sensual-feeling
Illusion
Intuitive-thinking
REGENERATION
Despair

30. REGENERATION
Scorpio, ruled by Pluto, king of the underworld, is
compulsive power. Scorpio is negative and therefore physical. This compulsive
power can be seen operating in the sexual act . It is carried out in secret.
What is more physical and compulsive than orgasm. It is the power of the
contractions that give birth to the child – even if the birth kills. Libra, partnership,
ruled by Venus, is romantic love.
This is a powerful opposition – Pluto means power. The Greek myth of Pluto and
Persephone, the Babylonian myth of Ereshkigal and Innana, they both deal with
this Scorpio Libra issue.
Pluto wears a helmet of invisibility when he comes to the upper world – he is not
pretty. Scorpio is that time of year when leaves fall. Pluto is shit and compost
heaps and rotting fruit. His dark side is despair. Pluto breaks down old forms so
that they can be re-assimilated into the system. He is also the seed inside the fruit
personified by Persephone and symbolised by the pomegranate she carries. He is
one end of the regeneration process - Venus is the other. She is the beautiful
flower that entices and attracts.
Pluto is responsible for fossil fuels which result from the regeneration process. So
far he has kept our world clean but he cannot regenerate Plutonium. This is a
modern issue that is waiting to be addressed.
Venus is attraction. She understands the other. She is beautiful and charming but
also manipulative. She knows exactly how to entice. Another name for intuitive-
thinking is imagination. Venus uses imagination to conjure up images of romance
in her famous mirror. Her dark side is romantic illusion.
Each is indispensible to the other but they are very different.

31. ORGANISATION

32. Sensing
ORGANISATION
Intuition

33. ORGANISATION Leo, The King, the Father, the boss, organises
the large scale: kingdoms, companies and families. The planets orbit the Leo
Sun.
Virgo the secretary, the nurse, the servant, organises the details. Virgo is
practicality personified.
Leo is vision. No sunlight and we would require no eyes. Leo sees. We ‘see’ with
our hearts. ‘I see’ means ‘I understand.’
Virgo looks. Seeing and looking are different and entailed.
Conscious awareness (unless it is in the centre) is limited to only one area at a
time just as - I explained previously - the Sun cannot shine at the same time on
Sydney and London.
Looking requires concentrated effort. Most of the time we get along with just
seeing. If you want to draw something accurately you are required to look.
Virgo, ‘complementary’ partner to Gemini, rules libraries, where ideas are stored
in a myriad words and pictures.
Virgo can be involved with detail to the point of neurosis.
Leo can be self-centred to the point of tyranny.

34. This is where we begin to see exactly how
these functions of perception act in the brain.
Remember, opposites always entail each
other, and can only be separated
abstractly.

35. When I was in art school our teacher asked us if we knew what a
post box looked like and we all chorused YEAH. So he asked us
to draw one and we failed. We couldn't remember the details.
He sent us out to look.
Virgo LOOKS out into the world. It deals with a myriad details.
Leo can see things with the MIND’S EYE. Cancer memory (water
retains heat) memorises Leo images so we can recognise what
we see. We cannot look and see at the same time. If you are
visualising your front door you will not see what is in front of your
eyes. Try it.
Virgo
Looking
Complementary
connection in
operation O
Leo
Seeing

36. The final opposition is concerned
with
SURVIVAL
This opposition also explains a
familiar entailment but first I want
to introduce you to an even more
amazing piece of information.

37. These are the Complementary Connections as they line up
in the I Ching, the positive signs on the right and the
negative signs on the right.
Check out the Ruling Lines.
The Receptive The Creative
Earth Heaven
yang
Mercury
yang ruled
yang Gemini
yang
Moon
ruled yang
Cancer

38. These ruling lines tell us that these positions are of major
significance.
And they ARE!
Thinking
We pat our hearts when we use the word me.
‘Me‟ is the centre of the throbbing mass that is my
body (the Receptive Earth). ‘I‟ seems to hang
out somewhere in my head.
SURVIVAL
We say:
I AM ME
Feeling

39. SURVIVAL Cancer is gut feeling. Gemini is the wits. They work for
our survival. The guts will throw up if anything endangers the digestive system,
this will embarrass the wits no end, on the other hand the guts would not survive
without the wits to work out how to get us the next meal.
Cancer is ruled by the instinctual Moon. This is the place of the physical heart.
Straight square great without purpose’. The heart pumps the blood around the
body, its ‘complement’, Leo, supplies the energy, the beat.
The dark side of Cancer is self-pity (this is not Neptunian martyrdom). Poor me.
… The dark side of Gemini is superficiality.
Gemini, ruled by Mercury, messenger of the gods, is a ‘flying dragon in the
heavens’. It is pure thought.
Gemini rules the journalist. Mercury is not particularly interested in facts - facts
can get in the way of a good story . It is not intuitive either so here we see it as
ruling pure Air on the philosopher’s stone. It is invisible but it has a profound
reality and is so important we have given it a name. We call it „I‟.
The Dao De Jing begins by defining this pair, ‘Desire nothing and you will know
the nameless’. ‘I’ can only be directly experienced when the mind chatter is off.
‘Desire and you will know the manifest.’ The physical body has needs that must
be satisfied. ‘They are the same and yet different, a gateway of life’.
Consciousness says ‘I am me‟. Our sense of ourselves is the product of entailed,
opposite, cognitive functions, neither I nor me but the result of the interaction
between the two.
We are back at the middle again.

40. And here another ‘entailment.
‘Hearing’ and ‘listening’.
After years of thought I have finally decided with confidence which word fits which
position. Listening suggests an innate understanding of the meaning held by a
sound. Grrrrrrrrrrr – the meaning in this is obvious.
?
My husband was watching
Wallander. It has subtitles – the
words were written on the screen.
‘I need to turn up the sound’, he
hearing said.
Ah Ha! He needed the extra
information given by the
intonations.
Much underlying meaning is
carried by the intonations. The
O Moon reacts instinctively to
listening dangerous intonations. Mercury is
concerned with understanding the
actual words.
To understand this entailment concentrate on the sounds in your environment.
When you do this it is difficult to also understand exactly what people are saying.

41. And here is further entailment concerning these two.
Cancer is Water – pure feeling. If you concentrate on how
your big toe feels or on listening to your heart beat
you will have to suspend thinking.
Try it.
Thinking
SURVIVAL
Feeling

42. Brain specialists equate the frontal part of the brain with MIND. The older
part of the brain is at the back. This is the instinctive brain. We can think of
it as Heart.
Nothing we have learnt from studying the archetypes on our model would
disagree.
MIND and
HEART

43. Here is the Philosopher’s Stone. again
I think that it is beautiful. I hope it helped you to understand the opposites.
‘The mandala first comes into consciousness as an impressive point or dot’. Tracticus
Aureus, Aion, p. 32.
This point ‘being nothing and consisting of nothing, becomes a ‘certain magnitude
incomprehensible by thought’. Hyppolitus, Aion, p.199.

44. So Jung’s model directs attention to the circle in the middle where all
the various archetypes come together in a ‘point’ to create our
experience of reality.
This is the incarnation point of each moment where TRUTH,
STRUCTURE, ORGANISATION, REGENERATION, ENDURANCE
and SURVIVAL join forces to create our experience of LIFE.
We are here now!
How did the ancients know to intuit this? I am overcome
with amazement reflecting on the genius of their insight.
THE END
© Chrissy Philp