THE NEW PARADIGM

Readers of this Review are likely to be among those questioning the adequacy of the mechanistic and materialistic scientific paradigm that currently dominates our culture. The purpose of this impressive and closely argued book is to provide a new spiritual cosmology based on astrological principles incorporating both science and philosophy. It is not an easy read, but the task of metaphysical reconstruction is carried out in some detail. There are eight chapters in the first part setting out the basis of the new paradigm, explaining the astrological category system and then with chapters on spirit, science, soul, creative spiritual powers, matter and God. The second much shorter part explains the language of astrology and how to read a chart.

Whitehead famously said that Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, and the continuing tension between the approaches of Plato and Aristotle is reborn in every generation with occasional attempts to reconcile the two. As a whole, the book is a formulation of panentheism that also draws on the central insight of New Thought, that God is both immanent and transcendent, that each person is divine and therefore has the capacity to create their lives and circumstances. This hands us back freedom in a deterministic world. Astrological cosmology affirms the existence and primacy of spirit while maintaining that matter is produced from the substance of spirit and is not inherently opposed to it. An important basis for this new system is an explanation of the nature of truth as consistent and enduring, coherent, sound, simple, exhibiting patterns and regularity, beautiful, comprehensive, embodying reality and fruitful; as a result of these features, it is argued that truth furthers the good and has the power to transform the world. It also corresponds in a dynamic sense to Dharma, Tao or the Way.

The astrological category system using the twelve houses, principles, archetypes or universals forms the kernel of the book and these are subsets of an overall unity of being. Being is manifested in a descending series of expressions from spirit to soul to matter in a language of light. This is all clearly explained in a series of diagrams with corresponding correlations with physical principles (pp. 85-87) and a division of domains into kinematic (motion), space (quantification) and qualification. Within the first, we have action, force, the first and third laws of motion; the second contains spatial extent, content, junctures and division, while the third exhibits the laws of evolution, thermodynamics, hierarchy and qualitative divergence. These dimensions are then explored in some detail along with the corresponding twelve types of unity.

Spirit in its pure form is defined as infinite, absolute and eternal Being-Unity; these terms are often associated with the concept of life as a power of active unification and sustaining systems in being in an overall tendency towards wholeness. Mind is understood as a spiritual substance characterised by awareness but different from thought. One catches an echo of Teilhard de Chardin in the idea of evolution moving towards greater differentiated unity and wholeness as the material expression of pure Being-Unity. Within ourselves, this is experienced as our self-understanding as centres. The well-informed chapter on science covers the history of physics (the nature of light, relativity and quantum theory, Bohm's quantum potential), and the various paradoxes thrown up by different schools and views.

Soul is understood as our core identity as well as a formative principle or formal cause characterised by wholeness (whose various features are elaborated). Both Soul and Spirit are understood not just as substances but also has powers, hence as causes - this leads to a detailed discussion of the four types of Aristotelian causality within a modern context drawing on work in developmental biology. In a consideration of free will and determinism, the author regards the astrological chart as a probability field representing our character and inherent tendencies. The last two chapters elaborate the nature of matter as a set of relationships and the author's personal concept of God, bringing the argument back to the advantages and disadvantages of a panentheistic philosophy that sees every expression of life as both a part and a whole (holon). At the end of this long argument, the author restates the importance of knowing who we are and its consequence that, as microcosms and instruments of divine creativity, we can live up to our true potential, transforming both ourselves and our collective world. This is a reasoned optimism based on a very extensive philosophical analysis. This may at first sight seem an unlikely synthesis, but the thoroughness with which the author carries her arguments through bolsters the plausibility of her case, setting out one of the most comprehensive metaphysical systems I know.