The Responses of the Astrologers

The shocks to astrological self-understanding, which arose, on the one hand, with the questioning of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic model of the cosmos and, on the other, with the establishment of the mechanistic-quantitative method, can be shown clearly in the biographies and works of the astrologers of the seventeenth century. The reactions to the challenge of Copernicus’ model took very different courses in individual countries, to the extent that rough generalizations should be avoided. However, it is basically true that the conflict between Aristotelianism—more accurately, new scholasticism—and the new quantitative-mechanistic thinking was where the ways separated. Those astrologers who fought against Copernicus’ view of the world and continued to seek agreement with the Christian interpretation increasingly found themselves losing ground in arguments, whereas those who followed a path of mystical Platonism, foreseen by Kepler, or who simply did not bother with heliocentric astronomy, created the basis for the continued existence of astrological systems within the new world-view. Let us have a brief look at the most important astrologers of the second half of the seventeenth century, some of whom wrote very extensive works.

We begin with Italy where, despite church bans, various astrological treatises and predictions still managed to appear, including the popular Almanaco perpetuo by Benincasa, which was extended to 700 pages in 1655 by the astronomer Ansaleoni. Even in Rome, between 1672 and 1684 a series of forecasts was published, which shows the sometimes inconsistent handling of astrology by the church. Most astrologers who were working at this time were accepted because they tried to defend the Aristotelian-based scholastic system against the attacks of scholars advocating the Copernican system. The best-known of them was P. Placido de Titis (1603–1668). This scholar, who came from an Umbrian aristocratic family, at twenty-one entered the Olivetan Order, a branch of the Benedictine order with its headquarters in Siena. Later he became a lecturer in mathematics and physics at the University of Padua and professor at the Milanese University of Pavia. Placidus, as he is still called today, wrote a great number of works on astrology in which he set out the compatibility of scientific astrology with Christian belief. He reacted in particular to the criticism of his countryman Pico della Mirandola by trying to eliminate any ‘qualitative’ branch of astrology. He considered the zodiacal signs, houses, aspects, and all the other factors to be physically real elements that must be derived from natural principles. These principles were mediated by light, which meant a direct influence of astrological factors and not a simple qualitative correspondence. Instead of geometric divisions and their Platonic-mystical charge, in Kepler’s sense, Placidus insisted on the Aristotelian physical-causal interpretation of astral effects.

In his main work, Physiomathematica sive coelestis philosophia (“Physioma-thematics or the Philosophy of the Sky”), which was first published under a pseudonym in 1650 and then posthumously in an improved version in 1675 in Milan, Placidus turned against the purely geometrically derived systems of houses and direction methods, such as those by Campanus and Regiomontanus. Following Ptolemy, he claimed—since the light represented the real influence—a division of houses by two temporal hours, i.e., by the proportional division of the movement of the heavenly points from one to the next cusp.¹⁶ Cardano and Mag-ini had already taught this method, and for purely geometric reasons, something the author did not mention. Placidus’ teaching on the division of houses soon became widespread; even today his method is the most used worldwide. Its strong influence can be put down not only to the Physiomathematica but mostly to the widely read tables Tabulae primi mobilis, which contained the principles of his teaching in seventy theses, expanded by house tables for reference, as well as instructions for calculation and thirty sample horoscopes.

Most Italian astrologers argued that in astrology real causal influences are at stake, which in the Aristotelian theory ultimately stemmed from the Primum Mobile beyond the spheres. This reassured them of the Church’s acceptance. Mention should be made here of A. Francesco Bonatti from Padua, Antonio Tattoni from Terni, and P. Giambattista Riccioli, whose extensive Almagestum novum followed Ptolemy. Riccioli formulated a sharp criticism of Copernicus and Galileo and published an astrological historical reflection listing all the so-called great conjunctions from 3980 BCE to 2358 CE. The works of Placidus and his colleagues were published with the Church’s permission, but in 1688 the curia changed its mind and put all astrological books on the index of prohibited books (including those by Placidus). The ban was made stricter in 1709, and this led to the center of astrological practice moving from Italy to England and the Netherlands. A reason for this disdain for astrology may have been the well-known astronomer Giovanni Montanari, who published a prognosticon in 1676 in Bologna, which was continued until 1686; the accurate predictions in it brought him recognition everywhere. In 1685, however, Montanari admitted in another publication that he came to his previous prognostications entirely arbitrarily in order to prove that one can get just as many hits by chance as one can with ‘learned’ astrology. That was quite a blow for the astrological community.

There was also strong resistance against the new worldview in France, but there were reputable advocates, too. The discussion in the Parisian Collège de France can be seen as paradigmatic, and the positions taken there bounced directly off each other. On one side stood Jean-Baptiste Morin de Villefranche (1583–1656), who was introduced to astrology later in life through his friendship with the Scottish alchemist and astrologer William Davison (1593–1669), and who, after his appointment as professor of mathematics at the Collège de France in 1630, soon rose to become the most famous astrologer of his time. Morin was highly respected by the queens of France, Sweden, and Poland, as well as by the cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin; he was the court astrologer to Louis XIII and, in this function, attended the birth of Louis XIV in 1638. Although he published numerous works in which he discussed Copernicus and Placidus critically, Mor in’s fame is based on his 26-volume life’s work, the Astrologia gallica, written in Latin (and, therefore, broadly received only after later translations), which he worked on for thirty years. The master did not live to see its publication in The Hague (1661), financed by Queen Marie Louise of Poland, who was one of his former clients. This enormous work consists of over 800 pages, 39 tables, and 80 sample horoscopes and is suggested by the author to be a complete encyclopedia of astrology as it is practiced in the style of Francesco Giuntini, known as Junctinus (1522–1590?). I cannot here go into the many innovative techniques and highly complex rules for interpretation that Morin developed (books are available in French and English; for the revivalist reception in France and Germany see Selva 1897; see also Schwickert and Weiß 1925, vol. 2). Nevertheless, one should bear in mind that Morin also saw the Primum Mobile as the central physical cause of all events, located beyond the planetary spheres. From there the astral powers radiate down and influence the sublunar world that, for its part, is made up of four original qualities. The zodiac is strongly linked to the Primum Mobile; the tragedy of Morin is that with the collapse of this Aristotelian system, his conclusions also lost their power of persuasion.

This weak point was an invitation to his adversaries at the Collège de France, in particular its provost, the physicist and mathematician Peter Gassendi (1592–1655). Gassendi refuted the Aristotelian idea of a first space that is filled with power and set against it an Epicurean-mechanistic model that saw God as the first cause of all events. The bodies of the atoms move around in an empty space and through this movement produce earthly events. So Gassendi followed Copernicus’ worldview but with the toned-down compromise of Tycho Brahe—the sun still revolved around the earth as the center, but the five planets revolved around the sun—since this did not seem to contradict the Bible. That was also the opinion of his friend Marinus Mersenne (1588–1648), who worked closely with Descartes, Hobbes, and the astrologer Campanella. In his work Quaestiones celeberrimae in genesin, which was published in 1623, he developed a mystical Platonic position similar to Kepler’s, to whom he later explicitly referred (Harmonie universelle, 1636).

Despite these attempts to adapt astrology to the new worldview, astrology managed to acquire the reputation in France, as it had in Italy, of being old-fashioned and unscientific. In 1666, the founder of the French academy, Minister J. B. Colbert, personally acted against astrology in that he strictly forbade the members of his academy to study this science. The discursive changes became fully apparent in the figure of King Louis XIV: while Morin was allowed to interpret his birth horoscope, on 31 July 1682 the king extended the ban on astrological calendars and almanacs, which had been in force in several provinces already, so that it now covered the whole of France. Astrology was finally excluded from the learned discourse in France.

History proceeded very differently in England. Even though the universi ties—both those that followed the empiricists and those that followed the Cambridge Platonists—rejected astrology as a serious discipline, and a few scholars occupied themselves with it only in secret, this did not lead to the disappearance of astrology from public discourse. On the contrary: in no other European country was there such a wide engagement with astrology outside the universities as in England (see Curry 1989). We will see that this continued interest would essentially contribute to astrology being re-adopted in other parts of Europe toward the end of the nineteenth century.

A large number of so-called professionals practiced horoscope interpretation and published political-economic forecasts. They were always in danger of falling victim to the law issued by James I in 1603 against magicians, fortunetellers, and astrologers. However, the law only made punishable such behavior that transgressed “the boundaries of allowed astrology,” or that took place with intent to defraud. And since the client who felt himself defrauded had to come before the courts her- or himself, which was embarrassing enough for most people, this law was not totally effective. Furthermore, due to political upheavals, official censorship was completely abolished in 1641, and consequently a big market for astrological literature suddenly became visible—Curry speaks here of the “halcyon days” of English astrology (1989, 19–22). Before 1640 there were no newspapers with astrological content, but by 1645 there were several hundred; while in 1640 there were only 22 new astrological publications to register, in 1642 there were suddenly 1,966; in the following decades there were, on average, three pamphlets published every day (Curry 1989, 19).

Even the most famous of all professionals, William Lilly (1602–1681), often called the ‘true father of British astrology,’ was taken to court repeatedly; but he, too, profited from the boom in astrology after 1641 (on Lilly’s biography see Parker 1975). Lilly came from a simple background. He had to give up Latin school in 1620 because his father was arrested for being in debt, and he got by in London as an errand-boy and servant. However, he was fortunate; after the death of his master, he married the rich widow and managed to increase his new wealth considerably by speculating on property. When he was thirty, he became interested in astrology; the first results of his interest in mundane astrological techniques were the political almanacs published under his pseudonym, “Merlinus anglicus,” in 1644 and 1645. For this work he found himself before the courts but, because of his clever defense, was not punished.

Lilly, who was outstanding at Latin and thus could read all the available literature on the subject, completely dedicated his life to astrology and contributed to the development of the seventeenth century as ‘the golden century of astrology’ in England. He fostered contact with many specialists, including Sir Elias Ashmole (1617–1692), with whom he soon became close friends (Curry 1989, 35–40). Lilly also dedicated his autobiography to the founder of the famous Ashmolean museum. His autobiography appeared, under the title Mr. William Lilly’s History of his Life and Times, in 1715, and revealed such interesting details as a treasure hunt in Westminster Abbey. However, Lilly’s main work was Christian Astrology, modestly Treated of in three Books, which was published in London in 1647 and reprinted in 1659. The work, which consists of nearly 900 pages, introduces in its first part the principles of astrology with the use of many tables; the second part is a very detailed description of horary astrology with dozens of sample horoscopes from the author’s own praxis; in the third part, the author deals with birth horoscopes. There is a bibliography appended that contains astrological works (all in Lilly’s library) and an index.

Lilly raised so-called horary astrology (or ‘interrogation,’ the analysis and prediction of a sequence of events in hours) to a high art, and the following generations—including such astrologers as W.J. Simmonite and “Zadkiel” in the nineteenth century—still more or less copied from his works. Lilly’s fame is not only based on his virtuoso mastery of horary astrology but also on his predictions. King Charles I consulted him on more than one occasion, but he did not take to heart Lilly’s advice that he should leave London immediately and thus was executed in London, at Cromwell’s instigation, on 30 January 1649. Another of his predictions made even greater waves: in 1651, Lilly published the work Monarchy or No Monarchy in England, in which he predicted a catastrophe for London. When the plague broke out in 1665 and the capital fell prey to the Great Fire of London in the following year, 1666, Lilly was summoned before the commission investigating the fire and asked about his prediction. He explained that he had not known the exact time in advance, but presented himself as convinced that the fire must have happened through natural causes. The commission left it at that.

After the master’s death, Lilly’s adopted son and pupil, Henry Coley, took over responsibility for the almanacs. This genre maintained its popularity in England into the nineteenth century (for a detailed overview see Capp 1979). It can be regarded as a dispositive that significantly stabilized the astrological attribution of meaning in public discourse in Britain. In addition to Lilly and Coley, who wrote two sophisticated manuals—Clavis astrologiae (London 1669) and Clavis astrologiae elimata (London 1676)—there were other productive astrologers at the time. John Gadbury (1627–1704) should be mentioned. At first he was a friend and pupil of Lilly’s, but eventually he turned away from his successful teacher and opened a ‘counter school.’ This led to London’s astrologers having to decide to which camp they wanted to belong. Even after Lilly’s death, the argument went on and culminated in the publication of John Partridge’s polemical work Nebulo Anglicanus, or the First Part of the Black Life of John Gadbury (London 1693).

John Partridge (1644–1715) was also the first English astrologer to spread the system of the calculation of intermediate houses according to Placidus (Lilly knew of the new system but continued to work with Regiomontanus’ system). In two quite technical English books—Opus reformatum (London 1693) and Defectio gen-iturarum (London 1697)—he described in detail why the new technique should be preferred over the old ones. Moreover, Partridge wrote a very successful series of almanacs, which from 1680 on appeared under the title Merlinus Liberatus. They were continued until 1783 under his publisher’s pseudonym “Merlinus redivivus.” It was not made easy for Partridge, though. Not only did he always have courts to deal with, he also had to leave England for a while under the rule of King James II until King William III reinstated him. In the public debate, another episode augured badly for him: under the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff, Jonathan Swift published a satirical almanac for the year 1708, in which he prophesized Partridge’s “infallible death” at 23.00 hours on 29 March 1709. Subsequently, Swift made things even worse by publishing the letter “The Accomplishment of the First of Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions,” in which he announced the death of Partridge as well as his admission of failure, a description of the funeral, and the text of the inscription on the gravestone. He added, “Weep all you customers that use/His pills, his almanacks, or shoes.” Partridge was, of course, not amused, especially as this joke cost him a lot of money to prove to the confused public that he was still alive. But the episode offers a glimpse into the climate and the public role astrology had in England at that time.

Satire is an important discursive strategy that delegitimizes the truth-claims of adversaries. But Swift’s calculated attempt at diverting the English from their “gullibility” with his satires did not work. In 1697 the doctor and astrologer Francis Moore (c. 1657–1715) received a license from King William III to publish a “loyal” almanac, which first appeared as Francis Moore’s Vox Stellarum or a loyal almanac for the year 1697 and continued publication until World War II. Moore’s Almanac became the model for the many and very successful series of astrological forecasts of the nineteenth century. Despite a growing negative attitude toward it, even respected astronomers continued to practice astrology. A good example of this is John Flamsteed (1646–1719), the founder of the Greenwich Observatory and the first ‘Royal Astronomer.’ The horoscope for the laying of the foundation stone of the Observatory—on 10 August 1675 (according to the Julian calendar) at 15.14—was drawn up by Flamsteed personally and kept carefully in the records. The paper with the horoscope on it also carries the comment: Risum teneatis amici (“Hold back your laughter, friends”). The identity of the person who added the comment remains a mystery to this day. Many suppose this was a joke directed at Flamsteed, but it is more likely that Flamsteed wrote it himself in order to express his inclination toward astrology without having to own up to it in public. Flamsteed was a scientist well versed in all the astrological techniques (Oestmann 2002; cf. Hunter 1987).

Astrological Semantics in the Secret Societies of the Eighteenth Century

The study of esoteric discourses includes more than the history of ideas; it looks at the manifestations and materializations of these ideas in concrete social worlds. From this perspective, the circle of the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, and other secret societies can be described as a new dispositive or as a form of institutionalized esotericism in which Enlightenment and citizenship entered into a specific relationship (Neugebauer-Wölk 1999). This was the place where enlightened intellectuals such as Leibniz, Herder, and Goethe discussed their politico-philosophical ideals and extended rationality in the sense of ‘reasonable Hermeticism’ into an esoteric search for perfect knowledge.

In many aspects these secret societies adhered to the agenda of the Platonic academies of the Renaissance. While the origins of Freemasonry lie in the High Middle Ages and the oldest constitutional manuscripts date from the middle of the fifteenth century, these groups first entered the public domain in the seventeenth century as individual lodges joined together into larger associations and tried to put their systems in order. That is why the founding of the Great Lodge in London, in 1717, is often regarded as the actual beginning of Freemasonry. In parallel fashion, the Rosicrucians became more and more noticeable. In their manifestos Fama Fraternitatis (1614) and Confessio (1615/1616), these circles introduced the legendary Christian Rosenkreutz as an adept who had read the ‘Book of the World’ (liber mundi) and had been initiated into the tradition of Hermes and the Tabula Smaragdina. Moreover, the legends around the opening of his grave, in 1604, are similar to the discovery of ancient writings in the tomb of Hermes Trismegistus. This was how modern Hermeticism was linked to religious and political demands, which increasingly found resonance in the enlightened circles of the eighteenth century.

With reference to the historical significance of astrology, it is worth noting that within these groupings a symbolism was developed which was influenced by astrological elements. The initiation systems followed astrological seman tics—similarly to some ancient mysteries—and the initiations were carried out with reference to pockets of tradition that are known from Hermetic-esoteric and Neoplatonic cosmology. However, this cosmology had been widely psychologized in the wake of the scientific debate of the seventeenth century, so that it became more acceptable to enlightened thinkers. For instance, in the ‘Ancient and Accepted Rite,’ known simply as the ‘Scottish Rite’ of Freemasonry, the seven planets represented the seven Cherubim: Michael was Saturn, Gabriel was Jupiter, Uriel was Mars, Chamaliel was Venus, Raphael was Mercury, Tsa-phiel was the moon, and Zerachiel was the sun. The adept, on his spiritual path, had to know and to integrate the spiritual and ethical principles represented by the corresponding divinities and angels; in the rituals, these divinities were also performed and represented.

In ‘Egyptian Masonry’ this could take the following form: the walls of the room in which the ‘magician from Memphis’ observed his rituals—the sanctuary—decorated with red damask on which likenesses of Saturn, Osiris, Isis, Horus, and Harpocrates were fastened. The room would be illuminated by fifteen candles, which were arranged on the compass points. The altar stood in the east. Of Saturn, dressed in black and visible over the entrance, it was said he was the father of the gods grown out of a tree trunk, and the symbol of original matter. Osiris, in yellow and painted on the wall in the south, was the symbol of the hidden fire of the sun, kingly son of Saturn, husband of Isis, and father of Horus. Isis, portrayed in white and symbolizing moisture, nature, and earth (moon), was the eldest daughter of Saturn, and as queen she was sister and wife of Osiris. Hermes (Mercury or Thot) was her minister. Finally, in the east was Horus, as god of reason, holding the figures of fortune and death in his hands. To the left was the representation of Harpocrates, the brother of Horus and god of silence. On the right side of his chest, Saturn wore the sign of the sun, and on the left, that of the moon; in front of him he held the scepter of Mercury, which separated light and darkness. In the middle of the sanctuary stood a coffin between two palm trees, and at the head there was a tamarind branch, and over that the sign of Mercury. In front of the coffin there lay a rug similarly covered in symbols.

Basically, the performance served to outwardly display and to allow the adepts to experience physically what takes place internally—an initiation into new levels of consciousness, into knowledge processes that might help them on their way to higher reason. Astrological and alchemistic semantics are integrated into an overall cosmic-religious system, which no longer has anything to do with birth horoscopes or mundane astrology; but it was particularly suitable for understanding the elements of astrological interpretation as psychic powers. Works that come out of this context—such as Georg Welling’s Opus mago-cabbalisticum et theosophicum (1735, reprinted 1760 and 1785) or the work Geheime Figuren der Rosenkreuzer aus dem 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (“Secret Figures of the Rosicrucians in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries”) (1789)—consistently describe astrology as an Urwissenschaft, or ‘original science.’ Not at all interested in arguments about helio- or geocentric cosmological systems, this discourse links cosmic symbolism to psychic dispositions. In doing so, this discourse ultimately forms the basis of the ‘higher knowledge’ of the Enlightenment.

Astrology in Goethe’s Time

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe begins his autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit (Goethe 1811–1814) with these words. Starting with a description of his birth horoscope puts him in a tradition that began in intellectual circles at the latest with Girolamo Cardano (see von Stuckrad 2005a), and what he wrote shows a positive attitude toward astrological interpretation. The gentle irony, evident in the second paragraph, makes it clear that Goethe, like many of his contemporaries, did not rely on the interpretation of astrologers but rather dealt playfully and creatively with astrology.

As noted before, Goethe was well versed in the esoteric, Hermetic tradition of Europe from his youth. The esoteric branches of alchemy, magia naturalis, and astrology are referred to explicitly in many places in his works, for instance in Märchen, in the fragment Die Geheimnisse, in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, and, obviously, in Faust, the work which occupied the second half of his life. His “Orphische Urworte,” which to this day continue to influence the self-understanding of astrologers, became famous for their expression of the connection between determinism and creative freedom in a particularly successful way:

Goethe was not only a poet but also an intellectual who participated in almost all areas of science, politics, and art. His scientific efforts are to be seen in the context of what German language referred to as Naturforschung, i.e., research into nature that did not recognize a strict distinction between empirical natural science and speculative Naturphilosophie. Like Schelling and other philosophers, Goethe was interested in das Weltganze, or ‘the whole of the world.’ This was a living intellectual principle, perceptible and scientifically accessible in material reality but not at all reduced to that.

The context of this position is the critical reflection on the scientific transformation that started with Copernicus, Newton, and others, which many began to see as a ‘dissouling’ or ‘disenchantment’ of the cosmos. At the end of the eighteenth century, people were looking for alternatives to this conception and found them—again—in ancient Greece. When Goethe exclaimed, “Everyone should be a Greek in his own way! But a Greek he should be” (“Jeder sei auf seine Art ein Grieche! Aber er sei’s.” Goethe 1960 ff, vol. 20, 232), he was expressing the position of many of his contemporaries, who saw ancient Greece as a formative experience, which held all kinds of golden alternatives for the present; Greece was past, it is true, but could be revived. In addition to pure rational science, something else was found to be guilty of the miseries of the present, namely Jewish and Christian monotheisms, which had deprived the cheerful Greek culture of power and, with it, had created a bourgeoisie and a society that was hostile to real experience. Goethe’s friend, Friedrich Schiller, directly attacked Christian monotheism and started a great controversy with his poem “Die Götter Griechen-lands” (“The Gods of Greece”):

In contrast to the ‘soulless fiery ball’ of a Copernicus, here was the sun god, Helios, as a mythical countermeasure that could restore the lost unity of humankind with the cosmos.

As a result of the restoration of the ancient world of the gods, astrology also gained a new literary respect since it seemed, at least in its scholarly philosophical form, to be a model of the living cosmos that portrayed the dynamics of freedom and necessity, of history and religion. How Schiller processed these dynamics can be inferred from Wallenstein, whose horoscope, since Kepler’s famous interpretation, had repeatedly been the topic of public debate. Schiller was generally skeptical about astrology and asked Goethe and his friend from Jena, Christian Gottfried Körner, to tell him how a philosophically reflective astrology could be possible and whether his understanding of astrology was correct (see Schielicke 2007, 66–70). Schiller revived the ancient art of astrological interpretation in the character of the astrologer Seni. However, a new opinion of the role of astrology, which was to catch on in the nineteenth century, was also evident in Wallenstein, for instance in the figure of Max Piccolomini. Although Seni still represented the strong power of fate perceptible in the stars, it was the critical position of enlightened intellectuals which now took the foreground. Astrology was no longer science but rather playful art and religion, which claimed its cultural place as the sign language of the living and ensouled universe, accessible to the loving heart.

Schiller’s example was still received positively in the nineteenth century because it provided a discursive entanglement of science and astrology that fit understandings of German Geisteswissenschaft. The term Geisteswissenschaft emerged in 1849 as a translation of moral science, but it had a meaning that is not rendered correctly in the usual English translation of humanities or the French sciences humaines (Rüegg 2004, 417). The meaning of Geisteswissenschaft is linked to the fact that the term itself is a new discursive entanglement of spirit/ mind (Geist) and science (Wissenschaft). Regarding astrology, an example of a positive evaluation along these lines is Robert Billwiller’s 1877 lecture “On Astrology.” Billwiller, who was the director of the Swiss Meteorological Station in Zurich, opened his lecture with the apology that on the occasion of the 59^th anniversary of the foundation of the Natural Scientific Association (Naturwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft) he would speak about astrology:

While this constellation of SCIENCE and ASTROLOGY entirely follows the new understanding, Billwiller reminds the audience that astrology is called “the mother of astronomy” (1878, 5) and thus belongs to the historical and cultural heritage of today’s sciences. Instead of blaming ourselves for “this great historical form of superstition” (ibid., 32), we should rather be proud of the way the human spirit has freed itself from the imprisonment of earlier periods. “This self-liberation should also be a reconciliation with the past” (ibid., 32). And this is exactly where Schiller comes into play. Billwiller ended his lecture with a quote from “The Gods of Greece,” and he introduced that quote as follows:

Aestheticization and Psychologization of Astral Powers in the Romantic Period

The astheticization and psychologization of the astral powers became an element in art and natural research in the Romantic period, in which people were searching for a whole and non-reducible explanation of the cosmos. Starting from Schelling’s (1775–1854) natural philosophy, which itself is linked to esoteric traditions, not a few philosophers of German Romanticism tried to reestablish astrology as a metaphysical science. In his 1802 “General overview of the current state of the German literature,” August Wilhelm Schlegel complained that, in the wake of the Enlightenment, people thought in categories of quantity and usefulness and had lost a sense of the miraculous. It is worth quoting this passage at length. Schlegel complains that

In this passage, all of the discourse strands are put together, trying to turn back the clock and re-introduce the ‘soul’ into science, astrology into astronomy, and dynamism into physics. Again, Kepler is the ultimate personification of this ideal state that has been lost in the wake of the changes in scientific method and philosophy. Consequently, Schlegel also pointed out that “astrology is an indispensible idea for poetry” (1994 [1802], 56), thus linking the discourse to the emerging Romantic blending of art and science. He did the same with physics and magic, arguing that what astrology is for poetry, magic is for physics.

We can clearly see here how the discourses of astrology and astronomy on the one hand and magic and physics on the other are interconnected in an overall polemical discourse of ‘spirit and philosophy of nature’ versus ‘rational science.’

The same line of argumentation is also dominant in the work of Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772–1801), who talked of the qualitative significance of numbers and called astronomy the ‘true metaphysics’ and ‘right astrology.’ Following the work of Franz Anton Mesmer—whose dissertation carried the characteristic title De influxu astrorum in corpore humano (“The Influence of the Stars on the Human Body”)—numerous scholars of nature, including the poet Justinus Kerner, tried to find in the whole universe and in matter an original principle that was also present in astrology. Philosophers like Gustav Theodor Fechner came up with speculative thoughts on endowing the planets with souls and on the part that the ever-reincarnated human soul plays in the divine world soul (Erdbeer 2010, 335–506). All of these options were alternatives to those scientific paradigms that start from the primacy of pure reason and the mechanistic rationalization of the cosmos. This re-evaluation of astrology based on natural philosophy as ‘metaphysical astronomy’ is easily distinguishable from the practical interpretative art of casting horoscopes as it was practiced in England. As the quotes from Schlegel make clear, practical astrology was criticized even by those scholars who otherwise lamented the disappearance of the mind from science.

On the continent in the nineteenth century, there were few people who had the confidence to come out into the open with serious astrological works in the ‘classical’ and practical sense. One exception was the ‘prophet and astrologer’ J. K. Vogt from Munich. He is supposed to have forecast the fall of Sebastopol and the downfall of Napoleon III and to have shot himself in 1860 when a lottery win he had calculated did not materialize. More important than Vogt was Professor Johann W. Pfaff (1774–1835) from Erlangen, who, in a work called Astrologie (1816), talked of astrology attempting to come home “into the circle of must-be-learned sciences” and of it necessarily being successful in that attempt since its traditions are honorable and true. In 1822 and 1823, Pfaff, in collaboration with his university colleague G.H. Schubert, published Astrologische Taschenbücher, which contained a complete German translation of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos and several essays on great conjunctions, the Star of Bethlehem, and other traditional themes. Pfaff was also of the opinion that a singular spiritual principle flows through the universe, of which everything is part. This he detailed in his collection of essays Der Mensch und die Sterne: Fragmente zur Geschichte der Weltseele (1834) (“The Human Being and the Stars: Fragments on the History of the World Soul”).

However, with the exception of these attempts at the restoration of astrology in scholarly circles, nineteenth-century astrology constituted a socially despised entity. Although some practicing astrologers still carried on with their activities, in the public perception and in the universities they could in no way make their influence felt. The discursive differentiation between mythological astrology and scientific astronomy had come to a conclusion, which can also be seen in the change of dispositives that characterizes the period. When we look at the historiography of scientific instruments, which links the history of objects to the history of experience, it is remarkable that “the 19^th century is the century when instruments were first considered to be explicitly ‘scientific’” (Staubermann 2007, 10). Focusing on astro-photometric instruments, Staubermann demonstrates “how an instrument became scientific and how instruments contributed to the making of a new scientific discipline” (2007, 10). When the experiential implementation of new instruments created a dispositive that legitimated astronomy as ‘science’ in the nineteenth century, the same occurred for astronomical observatories. In the first half of the eighteenth century, there were only some 30 observatories worldwide; around 1850 this number had increased significantly, but there were still only 80 or 90 observatories worldwide (Schielicke 2008, 10). That is why observatories such as that at the University of Jena were influential elements in the changing entanglements of ASTROLOGY and SCIENCE. Interestingly enough, even in the Romantic period some non-polemical links between astronomy and astrology were visible, for instance in the fact that Goethe, an advocate of astrology, was instrumental in establishing the Jena observatory, thus preparing the prosperous career of Carl Zeiß in Jena (Schielicke 2008, 10, 65, 73 – 76, 97– 99); it is also indicative of a more nuanced discursive constellation that the search for supernatural causes of astronomical phenomena and alternatives to the Copernican system were still discussed at the time (Schielicke 2008, 53–54).

The Dialogue between Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Gustav Jung and Its Impact

Jung’s strong interest in the intersections between psychology, philosophy, religion, and science brought him repeatedly into contact with natural scientists of his time. With the rise of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, which questioned the deterministic paradigm of the physical theories prevalent since the time of Isaac Newton, many philosophical and scientific interpretations of new models were discussed. In fact, Thomas Arzt may have been right when he wrote that even at the end of the twentieth century the implications of the new paradigm have not yet been fully understood and appreciated (Arzt, Hippius-Gräfin Dürckheim, and Dollinger 1992, 14). Among the most distinguished physicists of the twentieth century, Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958), winner of the Nobel Prize in 1945, deserves special attention, because his thinking on the interface of the natural sciences, philosophy, and psychology very much stimulated later generations (see especially Pauli 1994). Astonishingly enough, his work is not as appreciated as that of his colleagues, Einstein, Heisenberg, or Bohr. It is especially in discussions about holism and the religious dimensions of science that Pauli has been rediscovered (Laurikainen 1988; Laurikainen and Montonen 1993).

For Pauli, metaphysical dimensions were an integral element of physics itself. In a letter to Markus Fierz in 1952, Pauli wrote that the non-determinacy of this singular experiment was a return of the anima mundi (‘world soul’), which had been forced away in the seventeenth century (see also Pauli in Jung and Pauli 1952, 115). This notion already hints at the dialogue Pauli had with Carl Gustav Jung (Atmanspacher 2012; Tagliagambe and Malinconico 2011; Miller 2009; Sparks 2007; Gieser 2005; Atmanspacher, Primas, and Wertenschlag-Birkhäuser 1995; for a translation of the Pauli-Jung letters see Meier 2001). Besides the alchemical connotations of modern science, it was the concept Jung called ‘synchronicity’ that was a major topic of their conversations. It became part of a book they published together in 1952. Naturerklärung und Psyche (“The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche”) contains Jung’s essay “Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusam-menhänge” (“Synchronicity: An A-causal Connecting Principle”) and Pauli’s treatise on “Der Einfluß archetypischer Vorstellungen auf die Bildung naturwissen-schaftlicher Ideen bei Kepler” (translated as “The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler”). Again, we see how Kepler’s understanding is influential in the reconfiguration of discourses on astrology and science, this time by a leading representative of twentieth-century physics. This discursive connection remains valid even if it is important to remember that “the real subject of Pauli’s article was not primarily Kepler as a historical figure but rather Kepler as an illustration of the problematic relationship between the observer and what is observed” (Westman 1984, 177, emphasis original).

Roughly speaking, Jung regarded the phenomenon of synchronicity as an “analogously interpreted coincidence [sinngemäße Koinzidenz]” or an “a-causal parallelism” (Jung and Pauli 1952, 9, 26, 31). Hence synchronicity is the simultaneous occurrence of two events that are connected by meaning, not by causality. These few catchwords already reveal the close link between Jung’s vocabulary and the Hermetic doctrine of “as above, so below,” which is one of the fundamental ideas of the science of the stars. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Jung in this essay also addressed astrology (Jung and Pauli 1952, 44–69).

Wolfgang Pauli never appreciated Jung’s use of the theory of synchronicity as a legitimization of astrology, but he was interested in the far-reaching implications of quantum mechanics on the concept of nature. This theory refutes the Newtonian paradigm of determinism, causality, and objectivity. Pauli pointed out that the observer played a significant role in every experiment; empirically discernible reality is dependent on the observer’s place and subjective condition. Thus, the freedom of the observing person implies that the human psyche cannot be separated from the physical image of the world. In his 1952 essay, Pauli used alchemy as an example of a system that acknowledges this connection (Jung and Pauli 1952, 166; I will come back to this in the next chapter). Pauli was radical in his conclusions and argued that there is no objective reality. Instead, reality consists of rational and irrational elements. Not everything, therefore, can be explained with rational theories. Pauli proved that the physical world is not fully determined and not even necessarily built on causal relations with his famous “Pauli Principle,” which says that the distribution of an atom’s electrons, i. e., their mutual exclusion, is always a-causal. From here it is but one step to the ‘chaos theory’ that was discussed controversially in subsequent physical theory.

In addition to the Pauli Principle, brief mention must be made of the so-called EPR-Correlations (named after the “Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox”). In an influential paper in 1935, Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen claimed that the whole formalism of quantum mechanics, in addition to what they called a “Reality Criterion,” implies that quantum mechanics cannot be complete. They speculated on the existence of some elements of reality that are not described by quantum mechanics. There must be a more complete description of physical reality involving some hidden variables that can characterize the state of affairs in the world in more detail than the quantum mechanical state. This conclusion leads to paradoxical results, as László E. Szabó explains:

Steven Weinberg, another Nobel Prize winner, argued that an instantaneous change of wave-function in the entire universe is at stake here (1992, 81). And the physicist Nick Herbert claimed that the deeper reality of the world is maintained in an invisible quantum relation, the omnipresent influence being unmediated and direct (Herbert 1987). Not surprisingly, these interpretations have been enthusiastically picked up by astrologers (see also Kaiser 2011, 68–69). The Pauli-Jung dialogue and the related discussion legitimated the conviction that matter and mind are by no means separate domains. Put differently: it is in this dialogue that the discourse strands of SCIENCE, MIND, MATTER, and ASTROLOGY where re-entangled. One of the most important popularizers of this thinking is F. David Peat (b. 1938), who in many publications has contributed to the popularization of theoretical issues of quantum mechanics and modern science. His thinking is very much influenced by David Bohm (see Bohm and Peat 1987) but also reveals the imprint of Prigogine’s and Sheldrake’s holistic theories (on whom see Chapter 4 below). Most recognized is his metaphysical expansion of the concept of synchronicity, which makes use of the indeterminacy and simultaneity of phenomena as described in quantum mechanics. Peat, for his part, did not restrict himself to the holistic implications of synchronicity but elaborated a full-blown spiritual and metaphysical view of nature and reality, which is both imaginative and speculative (Briggs and Peat 1984; Peat 1987). As a result, Peat expects a coming transformation of humanity and society that will lead to a new integration of matter and mind, of nature and the human being.

Another, though much less influential, thinker of ‘astrological quantum discourse’ is Theodor Landscheidt (1927– 2004). In 1994 he argued:

Landscheidt’s book, the title of which combines ‘science’ and ‘astrology,’ is a good example of a late twentieth-century configuration of these discourse strands. However, his position is discursively much less influential than contributions by more popular authors, who argue that quantum mechanics should be combined with the theory of relativity or that string theory would be a candidate to answer the open questions that modern physics presents. David Deutsch, for instance, a fellow of the Royal Society in London and physicist at the University of Oxford, recently claimed that the world is a ‘multiverse,’ in which time can no longer be conceptualized as space-time but rather as a quantum concept, and in which time-journeys and many other fascinating things are principally possible (Deutsch 1997; Deutsch 2012; see also Greene 2003). David Deutsch is a good bridge to the next chapter, and I will come back to him, because he refers to ‘alchemy’ in order to make his point.

If we broaden our perspective and look at the genealogy of today’s theories of mind and matter, my research confirms what David Kaiser argued recently: “Many ideas that now occupy the core of quantum information science once found their home amid an anything-goes counterculture frenzy, a mishmash of spoon-bending psychics, Eastern mysticism, LSD trips, CIA spooks chasing mind-reading dreams, and comparable ‘Age of Aquarius’ enthusiasms” (2011, xiii). Instead of a “mishmash,” however, I would call these creative processes the re-entanglement of discourse strands.