Cultural Awakenings (Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology)

We appear to be undergoing a collective psychological and cultural death-and-rebirth initiation on an unprecedented scale, and of unique historical significance. The Uranus-Pluto square, in orb from 2007 to 2020, is correlating with unexpected and deeply disruptive changes in many spheres, but it is also providing a rare opportunity to overcome these pervasive crises to usher our cultures into a new world view that is more just, compassionate, mindful, and sustainable than the apparent dead-end to which the habitual assumptions of late modernity, once so productive and inspired, have led us. The articles included in this issue of Archai are profoundly optimistic, showing possible ways forward in both the cultural and theoretical domains, perhaps especially correlating with an alignment of Jupiter, the planetary archetype of expansive, optimistic elevation, in a T-square with Uranus and Pluto from late 2016 through mid-2018. The contributors-including Richard Tarnas, Becca Tarnas, Kent Bye, and Michele Maynard-write about subjects ranging from Alfred North Whitehead's cosmology, Aristotelian causation, Jean Gebser's concretion of time hypothesis, and Ray Kurzweil's theory of exponential technology to virtual reality, Marilyn Manson, the hip hop movement, and sustainability. This issue looks beyond our moment of crisis to new directions for the theory and practice of culture, suggesting the many ways archetypal cosmology can play a significant role in the transformation in which we are collectively engaged, providing orienting purpose, cosmic intelligibility, and a capacity for greater awareness of the qualitative dynamics informing our experience, at once liberating, heartening, and illuminating.