The Art of the Out-Breath
Franz Kafka and the Astrology of Psychological Integration
I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.” —Franz Kafka
If you meditate, you will likely notice that you, also, do this. It takes courage to look inside, acknowledge flaws and foster the self-compassion that provides the buoyancy to move beyond places where you don’t follow society’s shoulds. To notice thought and decide how to hone the speech, then to examine the speech and act on it—generate a cohesive piece of writing—is to cultivate for yourself healing, integration, and in your own time, a changed path. Viewed this way, Kafka sounds like an advanced meditator.
Famous for his story, The Metamorphosis, where Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself an insect, Kafka seemed to live a perpetual dark night of the soul. But whereas most people would want to end it by taking pills or avoid it by reacting with mania and escapism, Kafka leaned into the darkness and the death. The resulting works—which fully embrace surrealism and existentialism—became his ultimate resurrection, forever romanticized by the literary community.
At the Core, Who Was Kafka?
Born under a balsamic moon, one day before the new moon in Gemini, the energies of the world held themselves inward. Indeed, Kafka seems to have been, as we say in the meditation community, “dialed in.” His self-attunement and ability to express it so well renders astrology a highly appropriate mode of analysis for his life. His moon was of the fourteenth tithi (lunar day), associated with fame. And while the Sun and Moon in Gemini brought movement, exchange, and communication, and Mercury conjoined Venus to create works of beauty, the Ashlesha lagna (ascendant) bestowed a magnetic mastery with words. Surely, Kafka made an excellent lawyer.
But the Sun and Moon in the 12th house lighted for him a solitary, shadowy path. His natural growth through life would require research, a laboratory, a monastery or perhaps a jail—any pursuit with a solitary aspect. His intellect and perceptions locked onto detail. And the intense focus of the moment fired all of this into his being, where it would unfurl throughout his short life.
“Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep.”
The world did not have a place for Kafka, or so he felt. Close to the midheaven sat Ketu (the moon's south node)—a point of chaos or shedding, either in career or identity. Sitting alongside it was the marriage point. His opting for multiple sexual liaisons over marriage is called out here—Ketu sitting with the marriage point indicates the letting go of proper unions. Other considerations, especially Jupiter’s position, indicate lack of marriage and children, and a darker attitude that is less observant of proper conduct. Although he was keen to leave the world behind, its chaotic, ill-formed state still made its way into his writing. How could it not, due to the integration that writing brought him?
Whereas the notions of forgoing rest and entering death in order to write are shown by the 12th house, the symbiotic relationship set up between the 12th and 11th houses shows that he would gain from his writing and in turn, feel supported by writing to re-enter the dark. It’s as if his life was a constant in-breath of observation, so precise and well-crafted that perhaps it could be said that he became intensely aware of the bars of the personal jail cell that was his mind. But to harness it properly required an out-breath, which only his writing could provide.
Kafka could flawlessly describe his cage, including the discomfort with authority that’s common to those with a twelfth-house Sun—it was simply not in his bones to be the boss. He would not live long enough to step outside the thing he described so well. A Vedic astrologer could have pointed out the picture to him—Jupiter (a guru and also the father) was placed in the 12th house. What this means is that Kafka’s cage was filled with thoughts that were deep and from varied sources but not always wise. Something about his father was trapped in there too. What would an astrologer have said? “Do write! Mercury is perfectly conjunct Venus, bringing you gains while allowing you to process the darkness you so well perceive ... and wear condoms.”
Kafka is romanticized. His soul’s progress happens in the darkness, the darkness of bed pleasures and during the moments when it would be a time of sleep. Parallel to the teachings of the Buddha, Kafka said that it’s more than being a hermit, more than that reclusive pull away from society. Indeed, with Jupiter in the 12th house affecting the Sun and Moon, Kafka found his life path and its sense of adventure in his pull to darkness. He found the middle way through his writings. As ill-advised as it may seem to others, this is simply how he worked—the dharma of his soul. Don’t copy him—if you must romanticize, romanticize your own dharma.
