Hearing the music of the spheres

What is called music in everyday language can be understood as merely a subset or miniature of that music or harmony of the whole music which is working behind everything, and which is the source and origin of nature. There is an age-old myth describing human development as a process of ascent through the spheres of the imaginal world. Experiences of this ascent are often described in terms of the music associated with the process and the domains encountered. The spheres may be associated symbolically with the planetary spheres, each associated with a particular tone such that their changing relationships produced an ever-changing musical harmony comprehensible as a whole. The movement of the individual through the spheres is then understood as a purification process. Thus for Jung, the ascent through the planetary spheres therefore meant something like a shedding of the characterological qualities indicated by the horoscope, namely a retrogressive liberation from the character originally imprinted by the rulers of those spheres. In this sense the ascent is like the overcoming of a series of psychic obstacles beyond which the harmony of the spheres is eventually experienced. The ascent is thus a journey, or a series of initiations in the imaginal world. The music that is heard there and whose supernatural beauty is always remarked upon is none other than the knowledge gained in those initiations by those who have attained the requisite stage of psychic growth. It is therefore in music the seer can see the picture of the whole universe. From this perspective the cosmic system works by and through the laws of music.