Appendix 2
KEPLER TRANSLATIONS

This present publication is emerging on the 400-year anniversary of 'Kepler's star,' which in October 1604 blazed forth in the heavens. The whole of Europe was startled by this event - which we now recognize as a galactic supernova, a Milky Way star-explosion. Just as they were mystified by that event, so are astronomers today mystified by the fact that there have been none since! No such event, visible to the naked eye, has appeared in four centuries. Kepler composed his De Stella Nova about it, published in 1606. It discusses the so-called 'Thirteenth sign' of Ophiuchus and how it steps onto the Scorpion; let's hope a translation of it appears. It also has a section about the year of the birth of Jesus, as 6 BC, in terms of the pattern of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions in the zodiac. He argued that this would have been the stimulus for the Magi to set off on their journey. He saw the big conjunctions of 1604 around the nova as analogous to the earlier event. Also, he gave, in De Stella Nova, an answer to the major anti-astrology polemic by the Italian Pico Della Mirandola. Cornelius' in-depth discussion of this attack 2 characterised it as one of the most important treatises against the art ever, and as having greatly contributed to its subsequent decline in status - but he made no allusion to Kepler's refutation of Pico's views, which seems a shame.

Due shortly is a US translation of his Tertius Interveniens of 1610 by Ken Negus, which gives in some detail his theory concerning how astrology worked. Its title means 'third person in the middle', and refers to his posture of being midway between astronomy and astrology, at a period in history when the tragic abyss between the two was opening up. The title-page states that this book is a warning, given to doctors, theologians and philosophers not to 'throw out the baby with the bathwater' (the first use of this phrase) by rejecting the kernel of truth present in astrology, as they would thereby 'undermine their professions'. This has assuredly happened. The book is written in German which means that he wrote it for ordinary people rather than academics. It's quite short, and should be fairly straightforward reading for anyone familiar with modern German.

A superb US translation of Johannes Kepler's masterwork Harmonices Mundi has appeared, the first in three and a half centuries1. Its title translates literally as, 'The World-Harmonies, of which there are Five Books'. Its astrology section is mainly concerned to show which celestial aspects were effective, using musical and geometric reasonings. He justified his three new (quintile and decile) aspects. He there describes how it was the need to grapple with Pico's arguments that moved him to seek for the causes of astrology: 'I exerted my wits to shatter the force of the objections.3' He viewed the Earth-soul as responsive to celestial influence, which always strikes me as the first version of the Gaia hypothesis: 'For in the certainty, so to speak, that there is a soul in the Earth, let us now come to contemplation of its essence4.' The working of transits are discussed:

For when the foetus is mature, the faculty of the soul which is formative and in charge of generation girds itelf up to expel the foetus, and by that expulsion to light up the new vital faculty of the soul, particularly at the time when the stars return to the seats of the mother's or father's nativity, or to the same configurations and remind the soul of themselves and of their heavenly imprints.5

The eight volumes of Kepler's Opera Omnia (Frankfurt, 1859) contain much astrology, especially the first two volumes. A larger and more recent Collected Works of Kepler is presently being prepared, which contains notably less of his astrology. Tragically, of his collection of some 800 horoscopes, only a few survived, as were collected in St Petersburg, and these perished in the 1997 fire at the Pulkova library. Kepler's astrological manuscripts migrated over to St Petersburg for much the same reason that Newton's theological works mostly ended up in Jerusalem: no-one in Europe wanted them!

Only one of his calendars has been translated, as was written in Latin for the year 1602. These prognosticated climate, crops & politics for the forthcoming year, a practical application of astrology. He did them for some thirty years, and about six remain. His calendar for 1623 for example (In Volume 7 of the Opera) contained an in-depth discussion of the effect of the 'great conjunction' of that year between Jupiter and Saturn. There is a fine translation of the classic biography by Max Caspar, with Owen Gingerich, the US astronomy historian and Kepler expert, having greatly expanded its references6.

From Ptolemy's unfinished work, Harmonia, to Kepler's Harmonices Mundi and Addey's Harmonics7, there is a continuity of endeavour, towards a Pythagorean formulation of the world-harmonies in relation to human fate. The UK's Astrological Association derives much of its inspiration from the late John Addey. He and Kepler appear as two principal architects of the concept of harmonics as used in astrology, the former being more arithmetic, and the latter more musical, in their approaches.

References

1) Johannes Kepler, The Harmony of the World 1618, translated by E.J.Aiton, A.M.Duncan and J.V.Field, 1997, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.
2) Geoffrey Cornelius, The Moment of Astrology 1994 Ch.1.
3) Ref (1) p.361.
4) Ref (1) p.366.
5) Ref (1) p.383.
6) Max Caspar, Kepler trans. by Doris Hellman, intro. by Owen Gingerich, Dover, NY 1993.
7) John Addey, Harmonics in Astrology, fowler 1976.