Lacanian Astrological Attributions

[Liam_Donovan330]

In February in a flash of insight I understood what the planets and the elements were from studying Lacanian psychoanalysis. This month, six months later, Aquarius to Leo, I figured out what the constellations were. These are my attributions.

First the elements. These are Lacan's four discourses: the discourse of the master, the discourse of the hysteric, the discourse of the analyst, and the discourse of the university.

You can see the mathemes for the four discourses here: https://nosubject.com/images/5/58/Four-discourses.jpeg

Every time you are in discourse, every time you are a speaker, you are operating in one of the four discourses (one of the four elements). The formulas are closed and the cycle never ends. The master appropriate's the hysteric's surplus jouissance, the hysteric (Marx's worker) works to attain knowledge, the knowledge the worker obtains makes him an analyst (as in Hegel's stoicism and skepticism), the analyst Should do something and his decision makes him the university discourse, the Should of which then overthrows the Masters, becoming the new Masters.

My attributions are the master is fire, the hysteric is air, the analyst is earth, and the university is water.

Next is the planets. The planets are the seven holes in the Borromean rings. The metaphor here is the gunas + the elements.

You can see the Borromean rings with the Lacanian holes here: https://network23.org/codywithoutorgans ... n_Knot.png

Moon: Master: Phallic Jouissance
Mercury: Hysteric: Real
Venus: Rajas: JA (Jouissance of the Autre)
Sun: Sattva: object a
Mars: University: Symbolic
Jupiter: Analyst: Meaning
Saturn: Tamas: Imaginary

These are also closed.

What I learned recently was the constellations. These are the overlaps of the Borromean rings. There are six overlaps. The reverse side of each overlap (making twelve total) is the opposite constellation on the Zodiac. Each overlap is the hole + the other hole not involved in the overlap (i.e. if the overlap is the two strings of the Imaginary-Symbolic, the other hole is the Real).

Here are my attributions:

Meaning
Pisces (Jupiter) Imaginary-Symbolic
Virgo (Mercury) Symbolic-Imaginary

Real
Sagittarius (Jupiter) Imaginary-Symbolic
Gemini (Mercury) Symbolic-Imaginary

Phi
Aquarius (Saturn) Symbolic-Real
Leo (Sun) Real-Symbolic

Imaginary
Capricorn (Saturn) Real-Symbolic
Cancer (Moon) Symbolic-Real

Symbolic
Scorpio (Mars) Imaginary-Real
Taurus (Venus) Real-Imaginary

JA
Aries (Mars) Imaginary-Real
Libra (Venus) Real-Imaginary

Object a is not one of these because it seems to be for every point the opposite constellation for each planet.

A lot of Lacan is formulations of the Borromean rings. He has some other formulations, homeomorphisms, of the Borromean rings for the rest of his work. There's one on Google that has 16 total overlaps instead of 12. Is there a formulation of astrology with 16 constellations?

Hope this helped!

[mikestar13]

Probably someone has or will try 16 constellations, 13 and 14 have been tried and found wanting. 12 has been the norm since Egypt and Babylon, and has been confirmed statistically, which I trust rather more than anyone's mythos, whether or not it's Lacan's vaguely Marxist flavor.

[Jim Eshelman]

Liam, welcome back. We have heard from you in a while. I hope all has been going well. I remember that when you posted in the past you were very taken with Lacan and I see that this has continued.

In February in a flash of insight I understood what the planets and the elements were from studying Lacanian psychoanalysis. This month, six months later, Aquarius to Leo, I figured out what the constellations were.

I think a better way to say this would be that you have found analogies that explain the triplicities and signs to you. I think it inaccurate to say that these are what the signs ARE, since Lacan's theories simply one psychological model of themes observed in the human psyche. Nonetheless, it sounds like these theories have explained some things to you personally.

We all tend to find favored analogies in other theories that help us sort through understanding these things. So many, for example, have sought (and sometimes found) useful descriptions of the triplicities in Jung's psychological types even though these aren't an exact fit (some parts fit much better than others, yet even the best fit often doesn't align with actual astrological factors). I've been impressed with how the essential drives of planets (especially the 'classic' planets) map to needs theory. And so forth.

A lot of Lacan is formulations of the Borromean rings. He has some other formulations, homeomorphisms, of the Borromean rings for the rest of his work. There's one on Google that has 16 total overlaps instead of 12. Is there a formulation of astrology with 16 constellations?

Mike gave you a great answer. There are all kinds of "formulations" of astrology (if you mean "stuff people have made up about astrology," or "where astrology stood at one point in history." At a time the Egyptians had already stabilized their knowledge of 12 constellations, the Babylonians has 18 constellations, though this later stabilized to 12. I don't know of a time or place that people thought there were exactly 16. The 12 constellation model, as Mike mentioned, has been solidly confirmed statistically - there are demonstrably 12 equal sections of the zodiac that currently begin 55° later than the vernal equinoctial point.

Lacan seems to speak powerfully to you. I suppose this is mostly because you share a Pisces Sun: His point of view and way of expressing it rise from a matrix similar to yours. While his planets don't strongly interconnect with yours, your Jupiter is near his Ascendant and your Moon-Mars on his Westpoint. This usually would mean that you value and honor him and feel a sense of common-soul or family-like connection with him.

[Patrick Machado]

I practiced, and underwent, Lacanian psychoanalytic psychotherapy for a year. (The local Jungian institute wouldn't have me.) The Piscean flavor is really strong. I went in for the psychoanalysis, not for Lacan, whose work didn't and still doesn't particularly interest me, though I developed a measure of respect for it after several months.

It never even occurred to me to attribute Lacanian concepts to astrological factors. I don't think they really lend themselves to that. If I were to do it, I'd start by looking at what set of things has the same number of things as another. The three registers and the three quadruplicities, perhaps.