The Planets Within: The Astrological Psychology of Marsilio Ficino
by Thomas Moore

~notes not fully transcribed~

It takes a certain Hermetic madness to see the soul of the planets, and so it is to my mad-hatted friends that I owe the greatest debt.

Introduction: The Recovery of Soul

While we have certainly gained something in the move away from superstition and ignorance, we have also sufferred a loss.

A healthy life is a musical life

Part I: Poetica Animae: A Poetic of the Soul

1. Marsilio Ficino: Physician of the Soul

Ficino was a musical therapist, having developed a highly sophisticated theory and practice of music in the service of psychology. (31)

2. A World with Soul

It is as if life on the surface had a resonating chamber, a musical underworld, like the hollow bowl of a lute or the tube under a chime. (42)

Let us be clear about this word fantasy. Fantasy consists of the images and stories we have within us as we go about our daily affairs. (43) #glossary

Self-knowledge begins with discovery one’s own “star” and “daimon.” (55)

The daimon is a guiding spirit, whether friend or adversary, who calls for a response. (56) #glossary

One’s own daimon may be sensed, like that of Socrates, as an inner voice, or it may be less definite: an urge, a longing, a deep wish, a persistent fear, a recurring dream theme or image… (56)

Compensation is an ego activity, an attempt to find harmony and balance. Constellation is a more imaginative act aimed at making a cosmos of variety and multiplicity in one’s psychological environment. (58) #glossary

But insofar as each one of us has the capacity to imagine and to entertain fantasies, we too are image-makers. (60)

3. “Dissolve and Congeal”: Psychological Alchemy

All our actions, in fact, involve us in deep mysterious themes and plots. (68)

If he consults a behaviorist he may find that a symptom like overeating or smoking may be rooted out, but what is left is a hole, an empty spot where once there played an enacted fantasy. (69)

In alchemy sublimation does not lead to a new object; quite the opposite, by allowing congealed fantasies to loosen and rise into awareness, one discovers the essence already present in literal events. (71)

And, according to many alchemists, if you don’t have a mess to begin with, you had better work hard to get one. (72)

4. The Elements of Psyche

In a sense, ego seems to age much faster than the physical body, so that a ten-year-old may sound like an old man. (79)

Pleasure lies deeper. It cracks open the soul, while entertainment keeps it soothingly shut. (82)