The Tempest: The Hidden Astrologial Keys

By Priscilla Costello

The “Shakespeare and the Stars” series celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and offer fresh and exciting insights into the ever-popular works of the world’s greatest playwright. Each analysis specifically highlights Shakespeare’s use of the archetypal language of astrological symbolism in both obvious and subtle ways. Such references would have been well known in Shakespeare’s time, but their deeper significance is lost to modern-day playgoers and readers.

By keying each play to a specific zodiacal sign and its associated (or ruling) planet, Shakespeare alerted his audience to their significance in revealing character, foreshadowing the plot, and establishing key themes for each play.

Each book ranges widely, incorporating related and relevant information from astrological tradition, classical and Renaissance philosophy, Greek and Roman mythology, esoteric wisdom, modern psychology (especially that of C. G. Jung), and great literature. Modern readers will find that each book will illuminate its play from a fresh perspective that deepens and profoundly transforms one’s understanding of these magnificent classics.

Each book is 64 pages and is designed to be taken to performances or studied before and after reading and enjoying the play.

Examining The Tempest, we will study its relation and characters to the Sign of Pisces and its (Traditional) Ruler Jupiter and (Modern) Ruler Neptune.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicolas-Hays, Inc
• Release date: Apr 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780892546442

Priscilla Costello

Priscilla Costello is a teacher, writer, and counseling astrologer based in Toronto. She frequently travels to the U.S. to see clients and lecture. She has been instrumental in the organization of Canadian astrology and currently serves on the Advisory Board of NCGR. Her Master's thesis on Gnosticism and Jungian psychology (1993) won the Master's Scholar Award from the NE Association of Graduate Schools. She is founder and Director of the New Alexandria, a center for spiritual and esoteric studies.

Book preview

GENERAL INTRODUCTION: DID SHAKESPEARE REALLY USE ASTROLOGICAL SYMBOLS?

"It is the stars,/ The stars above us,

govern our conditions..." (King Lear)

"Methinks it should be now a huge

eclipse/ Of sun and moon..." (Othello)

"I know thy constellation is right apt

for this affair." (Twelfth Night)

Shakespeare's works are filled with references like these to heavenly bodies and stellar events. This isn't surprising since people of his time were more aware of the skies and the stars than we are: with no electric lights and few clocks, farmers, mariners, and the average Elizabethan looked to the sky to determine time and weather. Since personalities were classified in relation to specific planets (an early form of psychology) and medical practice was based on planetary types (or temperaments), the meanings of the astrological symbols were familiar to them.

For the illiterate (the majority) oral traditions passed down for generations made the astrological language familiar. The literate read yearly almanacs in English listing astrological omens. Educated Elizabethans grasped astrology's more profound implications since astrological language appeared frequently in religious writings. Steeped in the classical literature of ancient Greece and Rome, they knew that astrology is an integral part of an elegant, sophisticated, and intelligently-thought-out spiritual philosophy whose language and symbolism had been transmitted through the centuries and were part of lively discussion well into the 17th century (and still are today).

Like the members of Shakespeare's audience, his characters are also familiar with astrology.

His dramatis personae speak of stars, planets, comets, meteors, eclipses, planetary aspects, predominance, conjunction, opposition, retrogradation, and all sorts of astro-meteorology. They know that the Dragon's Tail exerts an evil influence, that Mercury governs lying and thievery, that Luna [the Moon] rules vagabonds and idle fellows, that Saturn is malignant and Jupiter benevolent, that the signs of the zodiac rule the limbs and organs of the body, that planets influence cities and nations . . . Although they do not go into details regarding the technical workings of the science, his characters on the whole seem to possess a general knowledge of stellar influence on human destiny. —Johnstone Parr¹

We don't catch many of the astrological allusions in Shakespeare's plays and understand their significance because we're no longer steeped in the grand worldview that was fundamental to Elizabethan thinking. We're conditioned in our time by the dominant beliefs of conventional materialistic science: that only physical things are real and that the only way to acquire knowledge is through five-sense perception. But for hundreds of years before Shakespeare's time the dominant paradigm was of a universe unfolding from Divinity in an orderly progression of hierarchical levels, down through the realm of the fixed stars, through the crystalline spheres of the seven classical planets, and ultimately into the physical world of human beings, animals, plants, and minerals. The fact that the planets are an integral part of this worldview justifies looking at Shakespeare's plays through the lens of astrology.

Each level is linked with all the levels above and below it, so that references to the planets trigger a host of associations on all the other levels. In a worldview in which the heavens are reflected on Earth and the realm of Earth mirrors the heavens, it is natural to see a connection between the glorious Sun that dominates the skies and the King who is the focus of court and country. Shimmering moonlight is symbolically reflected in the sheen of silver. Because this worldview allows for sympathetic resonances between all levels of creation, Shakespeare can write of tempests both external to King Lear and within his mind, of eclipses that portend the fall of kings, and of horses that eat each other when Macbeth murders King Duncan. Events on one level of being can reflect events on another.

Since Shakespeare's works reflect this generally accepted worldview, the vast majority of his characters' statements are overwhelmingly in line with the Renaissance astrological worldview familiar to his audience. Shakespeare naturally draws on familiar astrological