By John D. Grove, MA, MSW
I spent three days from the 18th of September through the 21st attending a conference on Psychosynthesis in Florence, Italy. This was an international conference held with the purpose of making real the legacy of Roberto Assagioli to an audience in over 50 years since his death.
Roberto Assagioli’s work on Horoscopes
Dr. Roberto Assagioli, the psychiatrist who founded Psychosynthesis worked and collaborated with psychotherapists, renowned people, philosophers, poets, theosophists, and astrologers to produce a form of psycho-spiritual healing that is truly remarkable. My research focused on collaboration between Dr. Assagioli and Bruno and Louise Huber, the founders of Astrological Psychology.
I searched in the archives and found horoscopes that Assagioli constructed. There were horoscopes on such notables as Pope Paul VI, Richard Nixon, Bruno Huber, Louise Huber, Michael Huber. There are hundreds of common people and his patients, such as the horoscope of Dianna Burch, a woman from Buenos Aires. Assagioli’s horoscope interpretations were all in Italian and spiritually oriented, e.g., Dr Assagioli was not constructing horoscopes for analysis of character alone. For example, he would look at individual traits in aspect patterns and comment on the potential for ascending to a higher level of understanding which is known as the presence of a spiritual center.
“It is imperative that we be masters over and not slaves to any passion, even passion of the highest good. And this requires the presence of a Spiritual Center, of a broader vision, of a vigilant and powerful will that knows how to ‘hold the reigns’ of the passion, to make it an element, an instrument of vaster synthesis, individual and super-individual.”
Assagioli, Roberto, 1993.
One of his interpretations on a horoscope was as follows: “Uranus in the 1st house square Moon – a lot of nervous tension and exaggerated dynamism with oscillation effecting spiritual evolution.” (translated to English by Manuela Voltan). Thus, he would look for spiritual potential or lack thereof in his analysis of individual’s horoscopes. (Archivio on Assagioli’s Astrological Studies)
Association between Bruno Huber and Roberto Assagioli
Bruno Huber was invited to attend a seminar in August 1958 by Dr. Assagioli who he had previously met in Geneva at the Arcane School of esotericism. Bruno had differences with the school on the way to psychologically help people. Bruno Huber needed a fresh start in application of his ideas, which revealed his first trip to Florence as a synchronistic event. He bicycled to Florence from Zurich and had to take a knapsack and tent since he could not afford hotels. Bruno was inspired by this seminar and stayed on an extra two weeks. Dr Assagioli was so impressed by Bruno Huber’s research that he invited him to stay and help him write a book for the Psychosynthesis Research Foundation in America. Bruno Huber moved to the Psychosynthesis Institute in Florence in February 1959. He and wife Louise were to help Dr Assagioli write a book on Psychosynthesis Techniques. (Hopewell, Barry and Joyce, 20201). This started the two-year residency of Bruno and Louise Huber in Florence
During the conference, I found myself looking through Assagioli’s archives in the Institute’s vast holdings, researching if the mentor of my branch of Astrological Psychology, Bruno Huber, was among his archived holdings or discussions. Bruno Huber lived and worked with Roberto Assagioli for 2 years. Huber was given access to Assagioli’s patients to construct horoscopes and produce his own interpretations. I wanted to see if there was evidence of Huber’s early thoughts on Astrological Psychology, which in the early 1960s was in its infancy. (Archivio on Astrological Discussions).
To be continued.
Featured image of Florence by Amada44,
CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons
- Hopewell, Barry & Joyce, Piercing the Eggshell, Hopewell 2020. ↩︎
Astrological Psychology 
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