In late 2007, a group of scholars, researchers, and practitioners interested in archetypal astrology came together to form the Archetypal Research Collective (ARC) in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. In 2008, during the months following the inaugural ARC meeting, the Archai journal and website were defined and established by some of the participants in the ARC group with the express aim of founding and developing a new academic discipline known as archetypal cosmology.
Archetypal cosmology includes the study of the correlations between cyclical alignments of the planets and archetypal patterns in human experience (archetypal astrology), but goes beyond this to address the theoretical basis of these correlations and their implications for the wider contemporary world view. Consequently, archetypal cosmology is a multidisciplinary subject drawing on scholarship from many other areas such as depth psychology, history, philosophy, cosmology, religious studies, cultural studies, the arts, and the social and natural sciences.
The primary aims of the Archai journal and website are to provide a forum for the advancement of archetypal cosmology by disseminating its research and ideas to academia and the wider culture, by developing its standards of scholarship, by exploring and deepening the archetypal perspective, by expanding research into world transit analysis through the study of correlations between planetary alignments and archetypal patterns in world cultural history, and by establishing connections between archetypal cosmology and other fields, especially those relating to the emerging integrative world view such as transpersonal studies and the new paradigm sciences. Archai is dedicated to furthering the research orientation and methodology established by Richard Tarnas in Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View.