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Chapter 5 We here study the natal chart of Johannes Kepler, and how it worked in the unfolding of his life. Such a study may illumine certain of his own principles: he was, after all, the last astronomer in the West to take astrology seriously, the last of them to sense the harmony of the spheres1,2.
Neptune Rising Kepler was born with Neptune rising. We may see this expressed in his quest for the 'music of the spheres', in the Pythagorean vision of the Harmony of the World which he pursued4. His search was for something transcendental, a divine blueprint which would link together his astronomy and astrology. Also, one must admit, his Neptune rising showed itself in the prolific number of arithmetical errors which appeared in his published works. One academic complained that, in the Astronomia Nova of 1609: 'The number of trivial computing errors is enormous, parameters are changed without explanation...'5, and suggested this as a reason for the hesitation of astronomers in accepting Kepler's new theories. Kepler naturally could not be aware of his Neptune rising, or indeed that his Sun was conjunct Uranus, both vitally relevant from our point of view. Instead, he perceived himself as a Saturnine type; discussing the Saturn-Sun sextile in his chart in an autobiographical sketch, he commented: 'To gnaw bones, to eat dry bread, to taste spiced and bitter things is a joy to me. To walk over rugged paths, uphill and through thickets, is a holiday treat for me. I know no other way of seasoning my life than science...'6 - a rather severe self-image.
Nowadays, we can see that his Neptune was in close opposition to the Galactic Centre. His ascendent was at 22° Gemini with Neptune at 23° Gemini, while the Galactic Centre stood at 21°35' Sagittarius. This is of especial importance because of the supernova which appeared in his lifetime, and which soon became called 'Kepler's Star.' It was in the zodiac and conjunct the Galactic Centre, so that it fell right on his descendant. Also, his Moon in Gemini was within ten minutes of Aldebaran the 'Bull's Eye', a first-magnitude zodiac star. Quintiles and Septiles Kepler invented the new aspects of quintiles and biquintiles, so we should not be surprised to find these aspects forcefully configured in his natal chart. He could only have noticed the one between Mercury and Jupiter, however I believe that we should include the outer planets for such a chart, and this gives five quintiles at his birth. The power of these quintile aspects became optimal right over the hour of his birth7. Quintile & Septile aspects in the charts of Kepler and Brahe: 'Quintile' aspects come from dividing the circle into five, while the 'septiles' - a more modern aspect - are made by dividing it into seven parts. Orbs of 12°/5 and 12°/7 respectively have here been used, i.e. 2.4° and 1.7°, and one expects just over two of these aspects per chart on average.
Kepler's great collaborator was the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who had amassed all the observations on which Kepler's theories came to be based. His birthchart also emphasised one kind of aspect, having a huge peak in septiles. In fact there were seven septiles present, none of them lunar. Brahe invented his own scheme of the seven spheres of the universe, which was very popular in the seventeenth century, as a compromise between the old and the new. Thus the numbers five and seven were dominant in the charts of Kepler and Brahe, two of the founders of modern science. Using the theory that Kepler developed (and John Addey in modern times), we can say that the fifth and seventh harmonics were strongly present in their respective birthcharts. While he was working as a mathematics teacher in the town of Graz, Kepler experienced a moment of illumination. The date was July 19th, 1595, and he was explaining the pattern of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions. The idea then dawned upon him that the distances between the planetary orbits were defined by the shapes of the five regular Platonic solids. 'The intense pleasure I have received from this discovery can never be told in words', he wrote. It became the basis for his first book, Mysterium Cosmographicum. We should note that four septile aspects were then present in the sky. A modern writer on harmonics has characterised the septiles as 'the consciousness-expanding aspects'8, and they turn up at moments of inspiration. A Jupiter-Cycle in Prague Kepler spent twelve years in his beloved Prague, which formed 'the most creative period of his life'9. He there worked on the foundations of modern science, producing studies on optics, logarithms, integral calculus and the new Sun-centred astronomy. He arrived in mid-January of 1600, and departed at the end of January, 1612. This period was a Jupiter-cycle, within two degrees. He met Tycho Brahe at Benatek castle, which the Emperor Rudolf II had kindly let out to Brahe, on February 4th, 1601. On the day of their meeting, Saturn was in opposition to Uranus within 18' and Jupiter was conjunct Kepler's IC. There began a stormy collaboration between their two incompatible temperaments10. They disagreed over many things, but mainly whether the Earth moved! Kepler was given the orbit of Mars to work on, which turned out to be fortunate for his breakthrough in finding his laws of planetary motion. It is appropriate to find Mars-opposition-Mars (to 2° orb) in their synastry. Kepler's Saturn-return arrived at the end of 1601. Tycho Brahe died in October of that year, and Kepler succeeded him as the Imperial Mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II at Prague. He was offered the post in November, the very month of his Saturn-return. After Brahe's death he also gained access to his colleague's priceless astronomical data, which had been witheld from him up till then. This became the basis for his future life-work. Had Brahe not died when he did, Kepler would surely have left after one more stormy argument. These events around his Saturn-return all seem rather fated. His classic work explaining why and how astrology worked was De Fundamentis Astrologiae Certioribus, 'On giving astrology more certain foundations'. It was apparently composed in just one month, in that November as his bid for the post of Imperial Mathematican11, and it formed the foreword to his almanack for the forthcoming year. Altogether, Kepler continued to compose such almanacs, whose business was to predict political, agricultural and meteorological events for the forthcoming year, over a thirty-year period, but only a few have survived. These were all in German except for that of 1602 which was in Latin, with De Fundamentis as its foreword. Its arguments were geometrical and musical in nature, and proposed something like the 'Gaia' hypothesis according to which the Earth was a living being, responding to the geometry of the heavens around it. Its composition formed a vital part of his Saturn-return. He soon resumed his struggle with the enigma of Mars' orbit, and eventually it dawned upon him that it had to be an ellipse. This new theory changed the whole direction of astronomy, by knocking out the millenia-old belief that the motions of the planets were to be described using circles. The date of the insight has been ascertained, from Kepler's old notebooks, as 'early April' of 160212, during his Uranus-trine return. Stages in the Uranus-cycle are prominent in the lives of revolutionary innovators, as US philosopher Dr Richard Tarnas has recently argued. The effect of such transits can be 'Promethian', in disrupting the accepted order of things13. For scientists the Uranus-trine return is an especially creative period. Tarnas showed how Newton's theory of colours, Darwin's theory of natural selection, and Einstein's theory of relativity arrived when Uranus reached this position. Also, I noticed that Leibniz discovered his method of calculus right on his Uranus-trine return. Kepler's Uranus-trine return was chiming within a degree at the time of his great insight. It came after his Saturn-return, which is unusual: a diagram of these two major transits to 1° of orb is shown. A Uranus-return takes place in three stages, as the diagram shows.
Figure 3: Kepler's Saturn-return and Uranus-trine return of 1601/2 A Nova on his Descendent In 1603, a spate of publications appeared concerning the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, which had just moved into the fiery triplicity, being in Sagittarius. Especial significance had long been attributed to the entrance of these Great Conjunctions into the fiery triplicity14. Kepler's predecessor Tycho Brahe had written prophetically about this forthcoming 'great mutation.'15 The first of this new series turned out to be a triple conjunction. Conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn measured out long eras of time. Their successive conjunctions are at 120° to each other, and hence they formed a triangle pattern that remains in the same element. They normally stay for two hundred years in the same zodiac element, taking eight hundred years to return to the same element. Some years earlier, Kepler had been discussing this triangle pattern formed by the Great conjunctions in his maths lesson in Graz, when the idea for his Mysterium Cosmographicum dawned upon him. Early in 1604, this triple Jupiter-Saturn conjunction was illumined by a brilliant new star appearing next to it, a mere few degrees from the ecliptic. As the Imperial Mathematican, Kepler was expected to explain what it meant. Tycho Brahe wrote about an earlier supernova which appeared in 1572 - within a year of Kepler's birth - and he prophesied a new era of peace and prosperity. Kepler's De Stella Nova struck a more cautious note, as ominous clouds were gathering what with the Thirty Year's War about to break out. The book's sub-heading was De Trigono Igneo, referring to the triangle of zodiac fire-signs in relation to chronology. He didn't mention that the new star (at 22°Sagittarius) was exactly conjunct his own descendent! His life was marked by two galactic supernovae, the only ones seen in the West. In the year 1618 Kepler came to understand the relative distances of the planets from the Sun. 'Kepler in these weeks and months must be pictured in a condition of greatly increased excitement, such as seizes an artist who has an idea which strives to be shaped' wrote his biographer Caspar16. The third of his immortal laws dawned upon him on May 15th, 1618: There were four septiles and four trines between the planets at this grand moment of illumination. The power of these aspects peaked at this moment. These aspects are appropriate for a deeply joyful experience in which the harmony of the world became intelligible. Following this experience he set about composing his magnum opus Harmonices Mundi, 'harmonies of the world'. It was fivefold in its structure, as likewise was his earlier Astronomia Nova, being divided into sections on arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy and astrology. This reminds us of the strong quintile aspects present at his birth. Kepler died on his second Saturn-return at fifty-eight years of age, having composed a suitably Saturnine epitaph for himself (in Latin): Posthumous Transits Very occasionally, Mercury passes visibly in front of the Sun, as too does Venus. Kepler was the first person to predict such transits, on the basis of his new tables. He discerned that the year 1631 would have one for Mercury in November, and another for Venus in December. A modern author has commented, 'As it is most exceptional for two such transits to occur in the same year, let alone a month apart, Kepler attributed a special significance to this event, and addressed himself to all astronomers and friends of the stars in an appeal.'18 This close juxtaposition of two solar transits has not occurred since. The Mercury transit was observed by Pierre Gassendi, in Paris, by using Kepler's tables. Thereby the astronomers of Europe came to realise that these tables were a lot more accurate than anyone else's, and they began to take seriously his new idea about elliptical orbits. Gassendi remarked, 'The world will marvel whenever it contemplates the Herculean accomplishments and the incomparable genius of this man'. During this transit, of November 7th, 1631, Mercury and the Sun were conjunct Kepler's Saturn to within one degree. Kepler died on 15th November 1630 (New Style), and twelve years later on 25th December 1642 (Old Style) Isaac Newton was born. Newton lived through a complete Uranus-cycle of 84 years. Thus, they both lived through complete planetary cycles. It is of interest to compare these birth and death positions in the zodiac:
This is indeed a 'truly remarkable similarity'19. Newton's gravity theory was firmly grounded upon Kepler's three laws of planetary motion, so we should expect some such synastry. Kepler's birth/death Saturn was conjunct Newton's birth/death Uranus. In addition they were both born over Christmas making their natal suns conjunct, 1½° apart20. Two of the founders of modern science had Sun conjunct Sun and Saturn conjunct Uranus, linking their fates together. 'nothing exists nor happens in the visible sky that is not sensed by some hidden means by the faculties of Earth and Nature' References
1) David Plant, Johannes Kepler and the Music of the Spheres www.skyscript.co.uk/kepler.html (The Traditional Astrologer, Summer 1995 pp.14-19) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
