I just published a conversation with my dear friend and mentor, Ernst Wilhelm. We discussed his latest research into the Indian symbology of the twelve Adityas and their value for astrological interpretation. The Adityas are solar deities first described in the Rig Veda and elaborated throughout Puranic literature. Ernst resurrects these ancient symbols and applies them to the astrological zodiac, where they construct a symbolic order of meaning that transcends and includes the Greek zoological signs.

The astrological zodiac signifies a 360-degree circle that circumscribes a relational field. If we understand the zodiac as a signifier rather than a thing, then its function as a symbolic order becomes available to us. What Ernst calls the "Aditya circle" is thus a meta-structure of meaning that reveals a new field of astrological inquiry––the question of what it means to incarnate love in the law of our being.

There is yet so much to explore in the Adityas from astrological, philosophical, and psychoanalytic perspectives. The Adityas are not only symbols in and of themselves, they are a symbolic structure that contain other signifiers. As Ernst notes, each Aditya travels with a Rishi that extends the paternal law of that Aditya, or what Lacan would refer to as the "Name-of-the-Father". How do we incarnate the love we are here to give, so that love is no longer the egoic phenomenon of giving what you don't have to someone who doesn't want it? Is this the import of an astrology that unchains the symbolic order and encounters the real?