Consider The Solar System as a Placebo
Considering the inherent orbital nature of our solar system and, at least, the apparent orbital nature of what persists outside it, there appears to be a cyclical schema to our world. Carl Jung correlates this apparent cyclical schema with our perception of coincidence and tendency to attribute agency, or, rather, the synchronization of the world with the cyclical nature of our minute and wholly inconsequential position in it.
The spinning of the sun and the concentric orbits of the planets inevitably coincides with the appearance of cycles or, rather, we attribute cyclical natures to the orbital patterns of the universe that care very little and play no real, practical role in our own earthbound lives; there is only the appearance of it, and thus Jung’s theory of synchronization.
It seems to me that this phenomenon is a psychological remnant that is very much related to the same pattern of thought that led to the belief that the sun moves about the Earth, as opposed to the Earth revolving about the sun. The appearance of coincidental events must have a correlation to one another because, in our tiny, day to day earthbound interactions in and with our environment, there is such a correlative dependence that can be seen quite clearly; for instance, I water the grass, then the grass turns green and grows. But the appearance of a star in the night sky that is hundreds if not thousands or, more often than not, millions of light years away does not have the correlative power as such phenomena appears to our earthbound-eye.
If there is, nonetheless, the appearance of correlation, there may yet be patterns in behavior that could coincide by mere chance or luck, in a sense, with the cycles of the earth and its internal entities — such entities of which are dependent on many of them, for instance the tides and the evolution of land roaming organisms who have left the oceans at such “way-stations” — and thus with appearances, motions, and the eventual naming of our zodiacal signs.
When coincidences occur and we see them, we may be inclined to attribute meaning to them in the event that we perceive them to be relevant, in which case we would adjust our behavior to that meaning, thus giving the signs less variable “wiggle room” over the course of the evolution of, say, a civilization, and an ever-increasing relevance to our day to day lives. They became relevant by the cyclical nature of both our world and we humans who live in it, and not because there is a necessary relevance embedded in these phenomena in and of themselves.
Again, to summarize, these are only correlating cycles that happen to be correlating with one another by nothing more than that they occurred at the same time because of the cyclical nature of our universe and not because there is an actual designing pattern, say by a god or some other “intention”. The attribution of pattern elicits patterned behavior whether that pattern actually has a material, concrete impact on the consciousnesses living on the earth or not. Belief in correlation manifests correlation; that is to say, if you believe in a correlation, a correlation will increasingly manifest itself, given enough time and the “passing on” of such knowledge from one generation to the next.
This is not to say that I believe in astrology, but only that I’m pointing out a relevance and a certain explanatory power it once had that is no longer applicable or even coherent in a world where psychology or astronomy, respectively, do much much more far far better.
