Our zodiacal roots: Totemism and the theory of transitional objects

Anthropological and psychological investigation of Totemism, interpreting it in the light of DW Winnicott's theory of transitional objects applied to the astrological field.


di Giuseppe Galeota "Al Rami"

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What would become of the myth, the natural human capacity to be creative and to give birth to symbols, ideas, archetypes, our ability to conceive the numinous if we read literally the ancient texts that speak of divinities? Unconscious contents, when they come to mind through art, literature, religion, myth, are never literal memories of our past: they almost always concern allegorical reinterpretations, analogies, deformations and distortions of real facts. For the same reason we sometimes see in heaven the reflection of unexpressed desires.

The monstrous figures, the giants, the animals seen connecting the stars in constellations, often speak to us of our inner world. But this, for the astrologer, does not mean that the planets and the signs of the zodiac are only the result of the projection that the mind operates towards inanimate objects. It seems, according to those who study astrologies, that those celestial bodies and those cosmic spaces also have intrinsic properties; that is, they concern something that has to do with our physical and psychic life regardless of the fact that we see in them just what we have inside of us.

For example, Mars in astrology represents war and vital energy regardless of whether we invest this celestial body with precisely these psychological attributes. Jung would call this coincidence 'synchronicity', this correspondence between what we see on a planet and what it actually represents, according to ancient and modern astrological research. Someone, on the other hand, believes that this association did not happen out of the blue, that it is not the fruit of a "mystical" intuition; but that it was born following the observations that lasted centuries and millennia. However, nothing prevents us from thinking that the path towards the birth of astrology followed both paths at the same time.

Let's try together to make some hypotheses on the origins of astrology.Β According to my personal vision of things, to understand the roots of astrology it is very important to consider the moment in which a celestial body arises, that is, it appears on the horizon. The attention of the ancients was not aimed only at the sky, but the junction point between heaven and earth was even more important because it represented the main reference from which to start all astrometric calculations: for example, Sirius rises at a precise time of the year and this evidently represented an important moment for the ancients to organize crops and social life.

Here is also why the ascendant it has assumed great importance over the millennia until it becomes the essential point for the construction of a horoscope: because something appears that every time starts a precise moment of the year; and this is synonymous with continuity, tradition, social organization. Having a starting point means creating an order in space which probably also speaks to us of an internal order as well as a social one.

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Claude LΓ©vi-Strauss (1908 - 2009).

To support this thesis I started from some studies in the anthropological field and in particular from totemism, that is, that complex of beliefs based on the idea of ​​ancient men, that there is a particular link between an individual (or a class of individuals) and an element of nature (animal or plant, in this case a planet and a zodiac sign ). Totemism, according to the anthropologist ClaudeΒ Levi-Strauss it is a system of representation of nature by means of the symbolic; it is a primitive religious form, it is the veneration of society, it is a schematization of the human mind.

Even if it has to be proved, for me it is not absurd the idea that astrology was born from human need to create a social order. For example, from the point of view of marital relationships, totemism encourages exogamy, that is, it is useful for building relationships with people outside one's family. In a nutshell, there is talk of greater openness to others to encourage solidarity, but only with those who belong to "friends" totems on the basis of a rule that is based on analogy: only that group that has a totem that for some reason it resembles ours: for example, the group of the eagle resembles that of the hawk because the two are animals of prey.

We know that before becoming a "science" or a technical system organized in mathematical algorithms, astrology was mixed with the faith that gave rise to astral cults; but in turn we can hypothesize that they came from totemism. Let's give some examples: in ancient Mesopotamia, for example, each city was under the dominion of a deity; and the ruler himself was a living totem because he was "related" to the deity. Without going too far back in time, we can see that even today every Italian city has a patron saint, a bit the equivalent of the totem, that is, that religious symbol that holds society together through sharing and to avoid dispersion. In fact, first the group and then the city in general are the set of people who interact with each other on the basis of shared expectations regarding their respective behavior.

According to the social psychologist Kurt Lewin, at the base of the group is the concept of interdependence as it provides emotional bonds and a social identity. The aim is the achievement of certain objectives through a collective commitment; and this, in my opinion, can only exist by recognizing oneself in an ideal that in ancient times was represented by the totem. Consequently, the "social pressure" exerted on single individuals leads to discriminate against other groups and therefore to maintain aggregation precisely by avoiding dispersion. To keep the group firmly established, rules were needed which eventually became religious, that is convenient behavior and taboo behavior. That is why in my opinion society is the combination of religion, "science" and nature.

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Returning to astrology, belonging to a zodiac sign meant having a totem animals who is "relative" to us because it resembles us and represents us according to the reason that man, nature and therefore the seasons are interconnected. This means that there will be families, categories of people, groups, belonging to totems with which to bond more easily and others with which one cannot bond at all, according to mythical, mathematical and analogical thinking principles. For example, in astrology the zodiac signs are related that are in trine with each other, that is, they are at an angular distance of 120 degrees.

These are the premises that lead me to hypothesize that the relationship between man and the cosmos depends on the desire that the first has to create parental figures with the second, projecting internal contents into the sky, associated, according to the principle of analogies, to seasonal changes. But where does all this come from? Let's go even further back into the past and into the depths of our psyche.

donald-winnicott
Donald Woods Winnicott (1896 - 1971).

Why should man consider planets as objects to identify with? Because what matters is that the celestial bodies are also understood as transitional objects, that is, as substitutes for the relationship between parent and children: after all, the father is still a child and this bond is not resolved only in the descendants. According to Donald Woods Winnicott, the child in the face of his cognitive and emotional development and in the face of the process of differentiation and individualization, experiences a series of emancipatory stages that see him involved in a separation and rapprochement with the parent (or whoever takes care of his care and his needs: the so-called caregiver). During these stages of transition from one stage to another, the child uses the emotional and affective contents emerging from the relationship and projects them into an object that has become symbolic of the relationship itself.

Just as the child looks for his mother in objects close to him, so, perhaps, the ancients used the planets to connect with their stories, unconsciously living them as substitutes for real parents. Thus, in my opinion, the origin of totemism and therefore of religion and celestial worship derives from this need: what would the group and society be if not the need for protection and continuity?

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This becomes probable perhaps because man needs to live the archetype or constellations of archetypes associated with concept of "bond". The chains of existence, the knots to be untied, the union in marriage, are just some of the thousands of forms of an idea that has a lot to do with the "all is one" contemplated by Eastern philosophies, but also with the basic faculty of the human brain which is that of unify and divide the world on the basis of the similarities and differences that can be seen in nature, the foundation from which totemism develops as a factor of social, spatial and therefore cosmic-astrological regulation.

But does this actually affect humans? That is, is there really a "current" that manifests itself through events of an astrological nature? Why is the ascendant important as a basis for calculations also at an astrological level? Evidently it exists a link between being born and what appears on the horizon. From that moment on, it will be possible to organize the day as well as life, because each day can be compared to a life cycle. If we admit that we are one with the Earth and space, that we are part of this system, then perhaps we react to the same rules, that is, we work in unison with the Earth's rotation by becoming ourselves as small solar systems whose dawn is represented. since our birth ...


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