Collected Articles

These collected articles by Willi Sucher are arranged as they appear on the website
https://www.astrosophy.com/articles
ASTROSOPHY
Collected Articles by Willi Sucher
The articles by Willi Sucher collected below are arranged

as they appear on Jonathan Hilton's website
https://www.astrosophy.com/articles.
All drawings and diagrams are by Willi Sucher himself.
Justification for other imagery;

Image of moving stars by Eddie Marritz from the website www.astrosophy.com
Image on page 3 Vitruviusman and the new zodiac signs by Willi Sucher is made by Libra
This compilation was produced by Libra

after approval from Jonathan Hilton.
©Astrosophy Research Center 2015. All rights reserved. These Articles are for private use, study, and research only and
are not to be reprinted for any other purpose without the written permission of the Astrosophy Research Center.
Contents
Contents 2
Justification articles and illustrations 3
Illustration; Melothesia, Vitruviusman and the new signs 4
Articles without date 5
The Constellation of Cosmic Thought - Spiritual Nativity 6
Delayed Action Dynamics Between Cosmos and Earth 15
Easter 19
1937 24
July Astrology I - Prenatal Astrology 25
August Astrology II - Looking Through the Horoscoop of Birth 28
September Astrology III - Significance of the Prenatal Events Among the Stars 31
October The Prenatal Horoscoop (continued) 35
December The Riddle of Emanuel Swedenborg 39
December The Gateway of the Moon I 42
1938 46
January The Gateway of the Moon (continued) 47
January Napoleon’s Horoscoop of Birth 51
February The horoscoop of Death 53
March Darwin and Haeckel 57
April The Zodiac 60
May The Zodiac (continued) 65
June Horoscopes of Birth and Death 70
July The Horoscope of Death and the Life After Death 75
August Thoughts on the Future of Astrology 79
1946 83
April Renewal of Culture 84
May/June Time Signals from the Universe 86
1954 89
April The Thirty-Three Years Rhythm 90
1957 92
June Bio-Dynamic Agricultural Association 93
1981 95
Autumn Review of Dr. Elisabeth Vreede by Willi Sucher 96
About Astrosophy 98
Articles with no date
Constellation of Cosmic Thought
Delayed Action Dynamics
Easter
Articles by Willi O. Sucher
©Astrosophy Research Center 2012 - ISBN 1-888686-13-8
All rights reserved. These Articles are for private use, study, and research only and are not to be
reprinted for any other purpose without the written permission of the Astrosophy Research Center.
The Constellation of Cosmic Thought - Spiritual Nativity

By Willi Sucher
Traditional astrology, as it has been handed down from the past, and being based primarily on the birth chart
alone, allows us to consider only that part of human existence proceeding from birth to death. Hence the
situation has evolved that on the one hand we stand constantly confronted by experience with the fact that a con-
nection somehow exists between human destiny and the movement of the stars, but on the other hand that no
satisfactory explanation can be given for this connection that does justice at the same time to human freedom.
Through Rudolf Steiner, the possibility has been given for our age to consider the human as a being who
descends from pre-natal existence in divine spiritual realms into earthly life, and who, after stepping through the
Portal of Death, returns to the spiritual world in order to prepare for new Earth incarnations. In the sense of
anthroposophical spiritual cognition, it is incumbent on us to speak of a human being whom we encounter in
earthly vesture between birth and death as one who, in the condition of existence between death and a new birth,
is in reality, a star being. We must surely bear in mind therewith—and in Rudolf Steiner's sense one can—that
the star world is not, in this aspect, to be regarded as a cold timepiece, as it would appear from our earthly
outlook, but as the garment of beings of the spiritual world. And so it followed for the author to seek to
understand our relationship with that of the starry world, according to Rudolf Steiner's directions, and to have to
penetrate the existence of humans prior to birth and subsequent to death, in order to discover an astrology
worthy of our human dignity as spirit.
We wish to preclude the misunderstanding that any attempt to penetrate the pre-earthly realm of existence
should be made in some nebulous mystical way. On the contrary, the point of departure for our studies shall be
the natal horoscope of the human being. Whereas the natal horoscope is otherwise projected in general onto the
life span between birth and death, here the opposite shall be done, namely, the position of the starry heaven at
birth shall be used as a key, or seen as a threshold, to the stages of pre-earthly existence - about which some
thoughts have been expressed in the preceding explanation.
The birth constellation provides a key to the pre-earthly stages, prior to the descent of the human soul, in a
very real fashion; more specifically the Moon's position at birth. The position of the Moon is like a portal that
shows the way through stages of cosmic existence. One comes indeed, to distinguish three stages, “three star
Words”, if one wishes to speak in keeping with the “writing of the stars”, which are directed to human beings.
First is the pre-natal configuration that is calculated using the Trutine of Hermes, as will be clarified later; then,
the constellation of cosmic thought, to be explained more thoroughly here; and third, there is a configuration
which reaches over into the past Earth life. This third constellation will remain a topic for later consideration.
First, we must explain something about the pre-natal configuration. It is common knowledge that significant
events take place about nine months prior to the birth of a human being, which from the earthly standpoint we
call “conception”. From descriptions of Rudolf Steiner's in many places, we know however that what takes
place behind the physical events of conception are spiritual events of great significance. During long epochs of
existence, between death and new birth, the human soul has worked in cooperation with beings of the spiritual
world in order to create a “spirit-seed” for a new Earth body. When the soul descends, as it were, into the last
stage before entering the Earth-sphere, it enters the Moon-sphere and loses contact with the “spirit seed”. This
seed connects with what is offered up from the substance of physical inheritance. In the feeling of loss, the
human soul, having vested itself in advance with an astral body, draws together out of the cosmic ether an
etheric body. In the third week after conception the human I, enwrapped in astral and ether bodies, connects
with what has developed as a synchronization of physical and spiritual seeds, and unites the more intimately
with it during the embryonic period following.
These events, described briefly here, become reflected in a most penetrating fashion in the starry events
about the time of conception. This has been presented and illuminated from a special vantage point in the
“Constellation of Christ's Birth” (Elisabeth Vreede, “Die Konstellation zu Christi Geburt”, Astronornische
Rundschreiben Nr. I, Dec 1934, published by the Mathematical-Astronomical Section, The Goetheanum, Dornach,
Switzerland); that is, under the aspect of what the “hermetic rule” (trutina hermetis) can reveal about pre-natal
existence. The hermetic rule shows itself from various standpoints to be a vestige of real mystery wisdom, about
which something regarding its astronomical structure will be explained in future studies. It should only be
mentioned here that with this rule the variation of the mean embryonic time of ten sidereal months or 273 days
is meant, which is connected to the spiritual events described above. The Moon's position at birth is the key:
whether the Moon is waxing or waning, visible above or invisible below the horizon advises with regard to the
time, which can lie up to 14 days earlier or later than 273 days before birth. At that time the star constellation of
the pre-natal epoch is present, projecting a mighty tableau of the coming Earth life, right into the physiological
make-up. Much more must be said in the future about this constellation; may this brief mention of it suffice for
the present.
The pre-natal configuration (or epoch) is above all connected in its essence with the Moon sphere. The
embryonic development processes are themselves of a lunar nature. The embryo itself swims in water, or the
amniotic fluid, as a reflection of the Moon sphere. The corresponding constellation, too, is thoroughly “fluidic”
and must be understood in its flowing lightness and liveliness; it has nothing of the congealing nature of the
natal configuration in it, which relates to a quite definite moment.
This swimming of the human being in astral occurrences, which is so exceptionally lively in the embryonic
period, has a parallel occurrence at the other end of life, in the death constellation. Rudolf Steiner has pointed to
the possibility that a horoscope for the moment of passage of the human soul through the portal of death, which
can give extraordinary insight into the soul nature of a soul and into its preset karma. Indeed, Rudolf Steiner
points out that just as during gestation, the embryo swims in amniotic fluid, so, in the period immediately after
death, the human soul swims in the configuration of the planets that stood in the heavens at the moment of
death. This has proved true in full detail and will be reported thoroughly when we come to consider the death-
configuration.
Here, it is essential to note that a “swimming” at death does take place, being related to the watery condition
which is the very essence of the Moon sphere.
We have now worked out how the birth
constellation appears as the midpoint, standing over
the moment of entry into the physical world; then,
preceding it, we find, as if ascending a step higher
into the cosmic world, a configuration lying before
birth, the prenatal epoch, directing our gaze to the lunar
etheric events. At the other end of life a kind of parallel
appears in the death configuration reflecting events in the lunar
etheric sphere; for in this configuration there is to be glimpsed a mirror
image of the ether body, dissolving from that soul, of the tableau of destiny which lights up in those first days.
There remains to be mentioned that the pre-natal epoch must by rights be considered from the viewpoint of
the Moon. One is otherwise accustomed to seeing the star constellations from the point of view of the Earth: that
is, when we cast or study a natal horoscope, for example, we do so by assuming our earthly standpoint and
looking up to the dome of the heavens as to a tableau of appearing stars. This is also how natal horoscopes are
cast. But experience shows that if one wants to gain a proper relationship to the pre-natal epoch, to the time
defined by the hermetic rule, then one ought not consider the celestial events with the Earth as vantage point,
but, ideally, transfer one's vantage point to the Moon and look at the starry spaces from there.
As has already been mentioned, the present study shall be devoted primarily to a description of the
constellation of cosmic thought, or one could also say, the configuration of philosophic attitude. If the pre-natal
epoch has to do with ascending a stage above the physical to the lunar-etheric element, then the spiritual
nativity, or constellation of cosmic thought reaches out, even beyond this; it actually stems from the sphere of
2
the Sun. Despite this, the Sun cannot be looked upon as an absolute pre-natal event, although this configuration
may be present long before birth. For it may occur even after birth, turning all time relationships “upside down”.
This fact serves as an example showing us that our usual logical concepts of time from the earthly point of view
no longer apply. Therefore we have the moment of birth as the proper horoscope or natal configuration; a next
higher configuration is the pre-natal epoch, which has been referred to briefly as a Moon configuration; thirdly,
a further configuration, the spiritual nativity, which is a Sun configuration. That which has been described here
in a simple, sketchy way shall be explained and elucidated little by little.
Just as we speak of a door or portal in everyday terms, connecting one room to another and having to be
opened if one wants to go from the one room to the other, so doorways must exist in planetary realms when the
human soul wants to descend, let us say, from the Sun sphere to the Moon sphere and then, eventually, to the
Earth. Not without deeper reason did Rudolf Steiner continually use the expressions “the portal of death” and
“the door of birth”. Such portals must exist; they can be read in the script of the starry heavens, and are indicated
by the position of the Moon at birth. The hermetic rule states that the lunar position at birth indicates the “place
of the ascendent or descendent at the pre-natal epoch”; that in itself indicates the door leading from the Sun
sphere to the Moon sphere. Now we must put these relationships into a picture in order that they may become
quite clear.
We have shown in figure 2 below a configuration that could be present at a particular birth. The inner circle
indicates the situation at birth. The horizontal line shows the plane of the horizon, while the Moon appears high
and visible on the dome of the sky. One should note carefully two essential things. The trutina hermetis
(hermetic rule) states that on the one hand the ascendent at birth, i.e., the mathematical elongation of the eastern
horizon, meets a point on the zodiac at which the Moon, seen from the Earth, stood at the moment of the pre-
natal epoch. This Moon position at the pre-natal epoch is drawn in the second circle. If one (as described above)
considers the cosmic situation in this moment from the Moon's position, then one would see the Earth in the
position opposite. On the other hand, the trutina hermetis speaks of the lunar position at birth as being the
“ascendent of the pre-natal epoch”, as is shown in figure 2.
Therefore two ascendents enter our consideration: the
birth ascendent and the pre-natal ascendent. What is
expressed by this? One can make clear to oneself
via the birth ascendant what the term “ascendent”
means at all. Rudolf Steiner speaks of it not only
as the point of intersection between the extended
line of the eastern horizon and the zodiac, but as
the spatial hemisphere in the eastern direction.
This he brings into connection with the human
central, rhythmic being, the breast, describing a
semi-sphere in the structure of the ribs. Therefore the
ascendent is an image for what is a connecting bridge
between the human upper head being, which is more cosmically oriented, and the lower metabolic being, which
is more bound to the Earth forces. The ascendent is therefore a door from the “above” to the “below”, or vice
versa. In this manner we can grasp the nature of the ascendent. For the aspect of birth it is the gateway from the
lunar cosmic, as it lives in the organism of the head, to the earthly nature, appearing in the human metabolic
system. The ascendent of the pre-natal epoch (see figure 2 above) shows the doorway from the Sun sphere
downward to the Moon sphere. (The meaning of this doorway extends still further, but more about that later.)
One must realize, however, that these portals are not always open for human beings. The portal of birth is open
when the eastern direction (ascendent) points to the place in the zodiac where the Moon stood at the moment of
the pre-natal epoch. (A definite time of day must be awaited for birth.) The portal from the Sun sphere to the
Moon sphere is open, however, when the Moon node is at the point of the pre-natal ascendent or descendent—
called the natal lunar position.
In order to make clear what is meant here, let us dwell on the nature of the Moon node. This theme has been
covered in detail in an earlier publication of the Mathematical Astronomical Section (Astronomische
3
Rundschreiben 1927-1930; volume 1, nos. 9 and 12). Therefore we may restrict ourselves in the following to
only the most basic details necessary to our understanding.
When we consider the relationship of the Moon's orbit to the Sun's orbit (or ecliptic) from our vantage point
on Earth (geocentrically), then both orbits do lie within the band of constellations called the zodiac. However,
they incline toward each other such that intersections arise at two opposing points. These are called the lunar
nodes, ascending or descending, according to the direction from which the Moon crosses the ecliptic. At these
points of intersection, therefore, the Moon sphere (enclosed by the lunar orbit) is borne up by the Sun sphere
(path of Sun or ecliptic); here both, as it were, clasp hands. Now
the lunar nodes have the characteristic of moving contrary
to the direction in which the Moon and planets
move in the zodiac, so that they complete a single,
retrograde orbit through the entire zodiac, in 18
years and 7 months. Let us suppose that figure 3
below were to portray the planetary relationships at birth.
The Moon's position shows the pre-natal ascendent or portal
from the Sun sphere to the Moon sphere; or one could say
that the Moon shows the cosmic direction in which the human
being has approached the Moon sphere. But the portal first opened when one of the two Moon nodes reached
the cosmic position where the Moon stands later at birth. They can attain that position before or after actual
birth. Generally it must occur within an 18 year cycle, therefore within a span of about nine years before or after
birth. During this span a star configuration occurs that is of utmost importance for the person in question. For, as
has been stated, behind it the configuration of philosophic attitude or “cosmic thought” (spiritual nativity) lights
up. This corresponds through and through with what Rudolf Steiner has referred to in the lecture cycle, Human
and Cosmic Thought.
From an entirely different side, Rudolf Steiner describes in this cycle the various philosophic orientations as
being in origin cosmic or divine thoughts, showing in a magnificent way their congenial relationships to the
circling constellations and planets. The relationships disclosed in these lectures have been dealt with by Dr.
Vreede in the first part of this study. Now, empiric experience shows quite clearly that the stellar configuration
appearing when the lunar nodes arrive at the “Cosmic ascendent or descendent”, that is, when the portal from
the Sun sphere opens to the Moon sphere (when the Moon node arrives at the ecliptic position of the natal
Moon), depicts the special “world-view constellation” as described by Rudolf Steiner with regard to certain
personalities. These personalities will be discussed in what follows. According to the examples cited by Rudolf
Steiner, it will be shown that the “constellation of cosmic thought” (spiritual nativity) can in fact be re-
discovered in stellar events from a spiritual-scientific astrological vantage-point, and as such, is a Sun astral-
configuration as against the Moon etheric nature of the pre-natal epoch.
Just as the prenatal epoch can be recognized as compatible with the death configuration, it is possible to find
yet another configuration compatible to the spiritual nativity (termed here with reservation as the Sun-sphere
configuration). If we recall how the spiritual nativity, or Sun sphere configuration, depicts the philosophic
tendencies or inherent spiritual traits of the soul for the ensuing incarnation, traits and tendencies which latently
underlie or potentially work through the souls deeds during earthly life, we can thus suppose that the sum total
of the soul's deeds during life, depicted in the death horoscope, continue to develop after death. They do, but we
must digress to explain.
Immediately after death (or even in near-death conditions during life) the sum total of all the soul's earthly
deeds and experiences expand at first into a mighty panorama called the tableau of life. Then, from about two
and one-half to three and one-half days following death, this tableau transforms into beings. The soul's deeds
and experiences become beings expressing moral qualities. The qualities of these beings can be distinguished as
falling roughly into two categories: those that furthered the spiritual development of the Earth and of the human
soul itself and those which did not. All deeds and experiences of the soul must be judged before they can
continue to expand to the cosmos (or ascend to the higher spiritual world). Beings whom we may indeed call
gods or angels judge the soul's deeds and experiences in the light of their wisdom of ultimate Earth goals. Their
4
judgment requires time, and their verdict requires purification of the soul from its useless deeds. The soul
experiences their judgment poignantly but accepts their verdict eagerly, for it cognizes both as just and true in
the light of ultimate spiritual objectives of Earth evolution. The ensuing period of purification is known as
Kamaloka, or purgatory. When it ends, the soul ascends to higher spiritual levels. The judgment of the gods
during Kamaloka bears a similar relationship to the divine cosmic thought at the spiritual nativity. And just as it
is the lunar node, crossing the natal position of the Moon either prior or subsequent to birth, which thereby
invokes the spiritual nativity, we may expect that the lunar node will indicate the end of Kamaloka. It does; but
how it does so, must be explained later. Let us bear in mind for the present that there is a configuration
indicating the end of Kamaloka, which corresponds to the spiritual nativity on the other side.
To summarize the foregoing briefly: we took the natal configuration as a last, lowermost expression of soul's
relationship to the stellar world. On the basis of the birth horoscope, we came to the pre-natal “lunar-etheric-
configuration”; then, to the astral-light “Sun-sphere configuration”. Associated with the latter is another event
that can lie many years prior to actual birth, but which, in a very real relation between the “cosmic pre-natal
ascendent” and the cycle of Saturn, refers back to the time of the previous incarnation. It must be stated
emphatically that such a point in time cannot be simply calculated. That would be an impossibility, for here an
element prevails that eludes the grasp of the strictly calculable. Then we mentioned the correspondences of these
configurations to configurations occurring at
the other end of life, when the soul passes
through the portal of death, calling one the
death configuration and the other the
configuration at the end of Kamaloka. Beyond
the latter, we eventually find a final “Saturn
configuration”, which refers to a future incarnation. In
order to unravel the complex connections, the seven branched
candelabrum may serve as an image (figure 4). All this can only be mentioned briefly, unfortunately, but
perhaps the area in which future considerations can move may at least be clear.
For the present the configuration of cosmic thought alone shall receive careful attention, as it has proved in
practice. In the cycle Human and Cosmic Thought, the configuration of philosophic attitude of Hegel is
discussed. Rudolf Steiner says there: Hegel is a logical idealist, or in the language of the cosmos, Hegel has
Jupiter standing in Aries (see figure 5 below). Now we want to place against this remark the configuration
mentioned above.
Hegel was born on 27 August 1770. The configuration of planets for this
date is shown in the inner circle of figure 5. (The exact time of birth was not
known but this does not interfere essentially with our study.) The inner
circle is divided into 12 sectors of 30° each for the signs of the zodiac with
which traditional astrology works. The outer circle shows the unequal
divisions of the zodiacal constellations employed in astronomy, so that for
example 30 ° shows the actual constellation of Aries as it may be
observed in the sky. The Sun and Mercury in Hegel's horoscope are in the
sign of Virgo; Venus in the sign of Libra; the Moon in the sign of
Scorpio; Jupiter in the sign of Sagittarius; Mars alone in the sign of
Gemini. Unfortunately we cannot deal with the significance of the imagery
that these constellations offer as we would otherwise like to do. That, too,
remains to be done later. Now, it has been stated that on the basis of the natal
horoscope the pre-natal epoch can be found by using the hermetic rule. Since the
exact time of birth is not known, and consequently the ascendent at birth cannot be calculated, the position of
the Moon at the pre-natal epoch cannot be established. For this reason we have drawn a second, intermediate
circle corresponding to the pre-natal epoch inscribing the path of the Sun corresponding to an average gestation
period of 273 days. Around conception, the Sun stood in the sign of Sagittarius, whereby we keep in mind that it
progresses about three-quarters of the way through the ecliptic in 273 days time (figure 5 above). Further, we
5
find ourselves in the lunar sphere of the pre-natal epoch but realize that the human being must have come out of
the Sun sphere prior to his entry into the Moon sphere. He had to enter it through the cosmic portal mentioned
above. The position of this portal is signified by the Moon's position at birth, which in Hegel's birth con-
figuration was in the sign of Scorpio, behind which the constellation of Libra was observable. It has already
been mentioned that this portal could first be opened when the Moon's node stood here. In Hegel's case the lunar
node was at this position already in 1762; the descending node was then in the sign Scorpio, or constellation
Libra.
Let us look at the constellation of planets at the moment when the Sun sphere and Moon sphere relate
harmoniously to each other as expressed by the cosmic script: when the descending Moon node (the intersection
where the Moon's path crosses the ecliptic in a descending direction) stands in the zodiac at the place where the
Moon comes to rest eight years later, at Hegel's birth. At about the same time, eight years prior to birth, Jupiter
is in the constellation of Aries. This corresponds to what Rudolf Steiner expresses as Hegel's worldview: logism
in idealism, or Jupiter in Aries. This is noted in the outer circle (figure 5 above). The other planets could also be
marked in this circle for the year 1762, but they are not the subject of our immediate study here. Only the
configuration pertaining to Hegel's world view was inscribed into Hegel's being.
Rudolf Steiner directed our attention with deep earnestness to the configuration of cosmic thought (spiritual
nativity). We should bear in our consciousness that, through our study, we are lifting the veil a little that
conceals the thoughts of the gods. Just as we human beings make impressions or engravings in our brain during
our day-waking thinking, so the gods impress their thoughts into the world, and these light up in human minds
as philosophic world views. In this manner the hierarchies are able to perceive their own thoughts. In a given
moment “logism in idealism” can light up in a divine thinking; and a particular person, who has been so
prepared during a former Earth life, is capable of taking up this cosmic thought, carrying it to Earth where it
becomes alive in the idealistic logism of a Hegel. Experience shows, however, that this cosmic-spiritual
occurrence shines on like a fare-well in the constellation that is present when the Sun sphere impresses itself
through the corridor of the Moon node into the Moon sphere. One can also consider this configuration as a
compressing of the solar-astral into the lunar-etheric of the human being, whether in pre-existential experience
or more as a remembered experience later.
We take now another example (from the same lecture cycle), con-
cerning Fichte's world view. Rudolf Steiner calls it logistic psychism or
Jupiter in Pisces. Let us compare this with the observable
configuration. Fichte was born on 19 May 1762. The planets at this
time are marked in the inner circle (figure 6). The exact time is not
known. It is characteristic for Fichte's personality—fully aglow with
will, never having bowed his head—that almost all planets are in
the signs of Aries, Taurus and Gemini, while Mars stands in
opposition in the sign of Libra. Since we cannot define exactly the
natal epoch we will forego it and deal directly with the spiritual nati-
vity configuration or Sun-sphere. The corridor from the Sun sphere to
the Moon sphere is here in the sign Libra, constellation Virgo, and
opposite the point of the Moon at birth according to the hermetic rule.
The lunar node reached this position in 1773, that is, eleven years after
birth. Nonetheless this time is important for our considerations, for then
Jupiter entered the constellation of Pisces (marked on the outer circle of figure 6.
In the observable configuration, the spiritual nativity appears: logism in psychism, which agrees with Fichte's
nature. It may be remarked here that this date, which lies after birth, shows us that there are various possibilities
for the time at which the door to the cosmic world can be opened. Thus we find that in Hegel's case, both eight
years before and two years after birth the lunar node stands in Libra. But in the latter case the configuration of
world view (spiritual nativity) is not to be found. Herein lies what is typical of this configuration, namely, that it
evades the purely calculable, for there are always two or three possibilities in an external sense, but the
configuration itself leads us into a spiritually vital and mobile sphere.
6
As a further personality, Rudolf Steiner mentions Wilhelm Wundt in
emphasizing the world views logism in sensualism (Jupiter in Leo) and
empiricism in mathematism, (or Sun in Gemini). Here again let us
consider the external configuration (figure 7 below). The birth
configuration is marked once more in the inner circle. Here again we
must disregard the pre-natal epoch. The cosmic portal stands in the
sign of Libra, constellation Virgo. It opened in 1837, five years after
birth; for at that time the Moon's node was at the same position.
Simultaneously, five years after birth, Jupiter was observable in the
constellation of Leo; logism appears in sensualism (note outer circle
in figure 7). The Sun's position at that time cannot be stated with
surety because of lacking the exact birth time, but the corresponding
configuration of empiricism in mathematism, that is, Sun in Gemini,
lies very well within the given limits as a possibility.
Highly interesting is the configuration of Friedrich Nietzsche. Rudolf
Steiner describes as a first phase of his world view: mysticism in the
direction of idealism. This corresponds with the epoch in Nietzsche's life when
he was still friends with Richard Wagner, when he wrote such books as The Birth
of Tragedy, etc. Then an epoch follows when Nietzsche became skeptical; he wrote The Gay Science; Human,
All Too Human, etc., and entered into empirical rationalism. It is remarkable to note that the “nuance of world
view” (pertaining to planetary position) move one step onwards: from Aries to Taurus, from Venus to Sun
respectively. After a while there should have been a progression to voluntaristic mathematism (Mars in Gemini);
the basis, however, was missing for this in Nietzsche's own life. Through the resistance with which Nietzsche
unconsciously opposed the divine guidance of the world, this configuration, instead of progressing from Taurus
to Gemini, switched into the opposite constellation of Scorpio. Thus voluntaristic dynamism arose - the period
of Thus Spake Zarathustra. According to Rudolf Steiner, such a configuration, with its will-force unleashing
activity, can only be sustained if a person is capable of penetrating through to a spiritual understanding of the
world. Nietzsche was incapable of accomplishing this feat in his present incarnation so he was crushed by the
challenge. At this point we refer to the external configuration to gain pictorial clarity of some details.
Let us look at the inner circle of the configuration (figure 8). The exact
birth time was known; therefore, the ascendent at birth appears here.
Pictorially plastic, Nietzsche's being approaches us from a definite
side in the conjunction of Mars and Mercury at exactly 180° of the
ecliptic in Libra, and simultaneously in the meridian position to
which Jupiter stands (typically enough) in opposition. In order to
illuminate this aspect, we would have to devote an entire essay to
it. A consideration of the pre-natal epoch, which could be
delineated more exactly here, would also lead too far aside. Let us
look at the spiritual nativity or the Sun sphere configuration. The
cosmic portal is in the sign of Sagittarius, constellation Scorpio. In
May, 1835, nine years prior to birth, the Moon's descending node
reached this place. Now the portal is open and the cosmic aspects
arise: Venus in Aries (mysticism in idealism), Sun in Taurus (empi-
ricism in rationalism). These aspects fully corroborate Rudolf Steiner's
indications. But further we also find Mars in the constellation of Gemini;
however, during the first part of April 1835, it would correspond to voluntarism
in mathematism. For this Nietzsche has, as mentioned, no predilection. This is substantiated by a sextile aspect
of Mars to Venus, which Rudolf Steiner called “unfavorable” when it appears in the world conception
configuration, in contradistinction to the otherwise favorable aspect of sextiles in the natal horoscope.
7
Because Mars is incapable of gaining influence in Gemini, it falls into opposition to the Sun in Taurus. That
happened in fact as Mars entered the constellation of Scorpio in 1835, and came into
conjunction with the lunar node, very near the cosmic portal (position of the natal Moon
(figure 8 above). Hence Mars arises in Scorpio, or voluntarism in dynamism. (figure 9).
This configuration shows especially clearly how little such aspects can be worked out
exactly. One might almost say, it “changes with the weather” and shows a kinship to the
air element, similarly as the pre-natal epoch shows a relationship to the watery element.
We shall bypass the two examples cited by Dr. Steiner of Schopenhauer and Hamerling, for both of whom
exact corroborations can be found, and shall turn to the configuration of cosmic thought in regard to Goethe
from the same point of view. In the inner circle of the corresponding figure 10, we discover the well known
natal configuration of Goethe, about which he himself speaks so beautifully in
“Truth and Poetry”. A discussion of the pre-natal epoch will offer us a
valuable supplement later. The full Moon, just past its prime, stands in
the sign of Pisces. According to the hermetic rule, the cosmic portal
is in the sign of Virgo, constellation Leo. This portal is opened by
the Moon node first in 1775, Goethe's sixth year of life. In those
cases where the cosmic event occurs after birth, one might
conclude that it acts as a memory of a pre-existential experience;
it is also possible (much speaks for it) that in such a moment the
mutual activity of Sun and Moon really resounds in the human
being. This consideration speaks strongly in Goethe's case, for his
sixth year was very significant in another way. We know that at
this age the young Goethe built an altar to the God of Nature, laid
upon it some of nature's offerings, placed on top a stick of incense,
and set it ablaze with the rays of the rising Sun, caught in a
magnifying-glass. When we bring this artless but genial act of
devotion to the world of appearances fully alive, and place beside it
the fact that in Goethe's world-view configuration of Jupiter appearing
in Virgo, or Phenomenalism is permeated by Logism, this corresponds to the cosmic situation in 1775 (figure 10
above); then, one cannot allay the impression that this Sun-sphere configuration has profound effects upon the
human constitution.
As a last example let us discuss the configuration of Richard Wagner. Here
the configuration pertaining to his philosophic world conception occurs at a
time shortly prior to birth. The waning Moon at birth stands in the sign
of Aquarius, constellation of Capricorn, quite near Mars. Therefore, in
this case, the cosmic portal is found in the sign opposite, which is
Leo, or the constellation of Cancer (figure 11). A few months before
birth the ascending lunar node crosses this point; Sun and Moon
connect, and Venus in Aries is a notable aspect that—translated into
terms used by Rudolf Steiner—refers to mysticism in idealism. If
we consider in Richard Wagner's creations how Norse mythology
became his very destiny, how he wrestled and finally victoriously
raised myth into a realm of primordial human ideals, one can well
conclude that the philosophic conception of mysticism in idealism
fittingly describes his spiritual inclination. This was indeed also the
philosophic world view in which he stretched out his hand to
Nietzsche—as long as Nietzsche himself lived under the influence of
mysticism in idealism (Venus in Aries), which we mentioned before.
Rudolf Steiner has disclosed a way for attaining spiritual knowledge. We should permeate all sectors of
human earthly experience with this knowledge. The intention of our discussion has been to make an initial
8
contribution toward permeating the knowledge of the cosmos, connected with our being as it is, with this
spiritual knowledge by attempting to show how behind astronomical occurrences the thoughts of the gods gleam
forth.
9
DELAYED ACTION DYNAMICS BETWEEN COSMOS AND EARTH
The working of the so-called astrological directions is one of the most difficult propositions that astrology
offers to the modern human mind. Many of our contemporaries find it questionable enough even to consider the
possibility of impacts of stars and planets on the Earth and its inhabitants, apart from the acknowledgement of
mere gravitational and nuclear influences. However, the idea that cosmic happenings coinciding with the birth
of a human being, for instance, should become effective possibly decades later is likely to be highly foreign to a
modern mind. Of course, such interrelationships can be comprehended on the basis of an occult conception of
the universe and human beings, but occultism itself seems to be a stepchild of our age.
The question is whether these problems cannot be resolved on a strictly “scientific” basis. Our impression is
that it can be done to the extent to which we acquire a clear insight into the nature of the relationship between
matter and so-called energy. With regard to the latter, humanity seems to stand anyhow at the threshold of great
surprises. We should like to present in our exposition, findings as the result of investigations that have been
carried out by the Landvidi Research Centre for some years. They concern the co-relation between such
terrestrial happenings as earthquakes, storms, but also certain historic developments and cosmic coincidences
prior to their reflection on Earth. We have thereby come to the conclusion that the so-called aspects between
planets, etc., can be delayed with regard to their effect.
The investigations were carried out on the basis of the heliocentric approach. (This approach has been partly
described in the author’s Drama of the Universe, published by The Landvidi Research Centre, Larkfield, Kent,
England, 1958.) One reason for this was the evidence that the rotation of the Sun; [it] was a decisive factor with
regard to the conservation, and therefore the delay of the effects, of cosmic events. The following example will
explain this.
On November 18, 1956, a conjunction of Pluto and Venus occurred, from the heliocentric viewpoint,
corresponding to c. 150° of the Earth’s ecliptic. This was accompanied by a conjunction of Saturn and Mercury
in c. 245°, nearly at a right angle, or a square aspect. On March 23, 1957, 125 days later, San Francisco was
shaken by relatively strong earthquakes. Thus the event suggested that a connection existed between the events
on November 18, 1956 and the return of the impression of the conjunction with Pluto on the Sun’s surface to
the corresponding area. It is well-known that the actual rotation period of the Sun is, near its equator, 25.03
days. Although at higher latitudes it is longer—up to 27.37 days at 40° Northern or Southern latitude. (See H.
W. Newton, The Face of the Sun, Penguin Books, 1958.) Those 125 days between November 18, 1956 and
March 23, 1957, correspond to 4+ rotations of the Sun.
The explanation seems to be that any such conjunction creates an indentation or “wound” in the finer layers
of the Sun’s surface. The latter might extend much further out into cosmic space than the actually visible layers
such as the Photosphere, Chromosphere and Corona. The so-called Zodiacal Light might be a confirmation of
this idea.
Those indentations in the layers of the Sun would then return in intervals of c. 25 days to the coordinates of
the slower moving planets, which would be Pluto in the present case. One can imagine that they cause irritation
on the Sun and in turn affect the whole solar system. The question is whether these “impressions” are actually
responsible, at least to a certain extent, for such occurrences as earthquakes, such as the one at San Francisco,
March 22-3, 1957?
Further investigations produced evidence that this is a strong possibility. On April 17th, 25 days later, the
original indentation area would have returned again into line with Pluto. The day before, April 16th, a
conjunction took place between Pluto and Mercury. Therefore the indentation area of this event has been only
about l4° longitude to the West on the Sun’s surface, which might have been an additional irritation of the old
“wound”. In any case, following another three rotations of the Sun (3 x 25.03 = 75 days) brought us to July 1st.
During the next few days a number of powerful earthquake shocks occurred in Persia. They were accompanied
by a heliocentric conjunction of Pluto and Venus on July 2, 1957.
The interesting fact is that after another 6 rotations (150 plus 5 days), that is, December 3, 1957, a
heliocentric opposition of Mercury to Pluto took place. We can imagine that these repeated angular
relationships to Pluto, coinciding with the return of the indentation area on the Sun, from the November 18,
1956 contact, caused increasing deepening of the original wound. The repercussion, as far as the Earth was
concerned, was prompt: On December 4th a giant earthquake happened in Siberia, of which the Russians
claimed fantastic changes and devastations of the landscape that were hit. The time-lag of about 6 days between
July 1st and December 4th may have been due to a shifting of the indentation-area into the Northern or Southern
latitude of the Sun, which causes the strange phenomenon of “slowed down” rotation.
Why should conjunctions or oppositions of planets cause “wounds” on the Sun? One possible answer is the
following: planets are points of consolidation and condensation. The layers of the Sun are obviously spheres of
disintegration of a magnitude that far supersedes anything of similar nature on the Earth. Therefore, it is
possible to think that the combined impacts of two or more planets might be piled into the layers of the Sun,
because the two cosmic elements of planets and Sun seem to be diametrical opposites.
In any case, it has been found, by the investigation of a substantial number of earthquakes, that the
described delay of effect of heliocentric planetary aspects always accompanies such occurrences. It is possible
to think that these wounds continue to “hurt” even if they are not directed toward the slow-moving planet which
caused them originally. The example of a series of six great earthquakes in Calabria between February 5th and
March 28, 1783, demonstrated this. The heliocentric planetary correlations were as follows:
First earthquake:
February 5, 1783, minus 150 days = September 8, 1782: Venus conj. Uranus (96°) opp. Saturn conj. Jupiter (271°)
minus 128 days = September 30 : Venus (130°) opposite Pluto (310°)
In both case the corresponding areas of impression returned by the rotation of the Sun into line with Uranus
and then Pluto, on February 5th , March 2nd, and March 27th. Important to note is the return of the indentation
areas coinciding with the first and the last of the series of earthquakes.
Other interesting sequences of delayed effect of this nature were:

18 April 1906: Earthquake of San Francisco
minus 124 days = 15 December 1905: Mercury conj. Pluto (82°) conj. Earth (84°)
minus 102 days = 6 January 1906 : Venus (262°) opp. Pluto (82°)
28 December 1908 : Earthquake of Messina

minus 74 days = 15 October 1908: Venus conj. Pluto (85°)
minus 175 days = 6 July 1908 : Merc. conj. Ven. conj. Uranus (284°) opp. Neptune (104.6°)
27 August 1883: Eruption of Krakatoa

minus 127 days = 22 April 1883: Mercury conj. Pluto (60°) conj. Saturn (58.3°)
1 November 1755: Earthquake of Lisbon

minus 176 days = 9 May 1755: Mercury (309°) opp. Neptune (129°)
minus 201 days = 14 April 1755: Venus conj. Pluto c. 258°
Naturally, one would expect similar repercussions in other spheres of the Earth as well. This can be proven.
During the last days of January 1953, a storm which combined with a springtide brought tremendous
devastation to the coast along the Eastern flank of England and the coast of Holland. Apart from simultaneous
heliocentric aspects (described in the author’s Drama of the Universe) these events were accompanied by the
following delayed-effect impacts:
a. 30 August 1952 Venus conj. Neptune c. 201° plus 153 days \
b. 22 October 1952 Venus (286°) opp. Uranus (106°) plus 100 days = 30 January 1953
c. 14 November 1952 Venus (322°) opp. Pluto (142°) plus 77 days /
2
The interesting fact here is that all the earlier happenings were associated with Venus. Furthermore, all
three of the outermost planets were involved. The entanglement of Venus in these kinds of meteorological
upheavals appears to be common as investigations have shown.
On November 26-27, 1703 (0.S.) the so-called “Great Storm” devastated the coasts of England and Holland.
It was a nature event that was, also with regard to the simultaneous heliocentric accompaniments, strikingly
similar to 1953. Earlier cosmic coincidences, according to heliocentric co-ordination were:
1 April 1703: Mercury (227°) opp. Venus (47°) – near nodal line of Mercury, plus 250 days =26-27 November (0.S.)
Saturn conj. Neptune (c.12°) opp. Earth (191°)
12 November 1703: Venus conj. Jupiter (c.47°) conj. Nodal line of Mercury, plus 25 days =7-8 December 1703
(N.S)
Other coincidences of a similar kind from a collection of data were:

2 June 1864: Venus conj. Pluto c. 42-43° – plus 125 days = 5 October 1864 and the Cyclone at Calcutta
(near the nodal line of Mercury)
13 February 1872: Venus (229.5°) opp. Pluto (49.5°) – plus 77 days = 1 May 1872 Cyclone near Madras
(near the nodal line of Mercury)
Conspicuous is the association of Venus with the Nodal line of Mercury, which is the line that is determined
by the nodes of the latter’s orbit with the ecliptic plain of the Earth. (These nodes of the planets seem to be
rather an integral part of heliocentric astrology.)
Why is Venus predominantly involved in these occurrences (see 1953)? The answer is not easy since we
have comparatively little data concerning the impact of this planet on nature; but experience in another field
might at least point out the road toward an answer. Venus obviously plays into the world of human feeling, as
innumerable astrological investigations have shown. Feeling is, in a sense, a meteorological sphere, because we
meet the tempests of passion there, as well as the calm occasions of joy and contentment. From this point of
view it seems obvious that we must expect the untamed equivalents in nature to also be caused by the impacts
of Venus.
Do these kinds of meteorological disturbances affect, for instance, aeronautics? We have a striking example
which confirms the possibility of such an influence. During the week August 9 - 15, 1958, seven airplane
crashes occurred in different parts of the world with the loss of over 200 lives. The heliocentric events at the
time are interesting but not overwhelming. However, the delayed-effect impacts should leave no doubts:
August 9–15, 1958: Heliocentric
minus 25 days = July 15–21 15 July: Mercury conj. (213.5°) Jupiter conj. Neptune (213.8°)
20 July: Jupiter conj. Neptune (213.8°)
minus 50 days = June 20–26 26 June: Mercury conj. Uranus conj. nodal line of Neptune (131.4°)
minus 75 days = May 26–June 1 28 May: Mercury opp. Pluto (c.151.5°)

1 June: Mars (311.1°) opp. Uranus (131.1°)
This leads us to the question of whether human life is also affected by these delayed-effect impacts coming
from the Sun. The fact is that they are discernable in big historic events. Here are some striking examples: June
28, 1914: minus 50 days (2 rotations of the indentation-area of Sun returning to Uranus) = May 9, 1914: Jupiter
conj. Uranus c. 309° and near the nodal line of Neptune, when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was
murdered at Serajevo, which was the beginning of the First World War.
November 7, 1917: minus 50 days = September 18, 1917: Mars conj. Pluto in c. 94°
“October”-Revolution of Bolshevics in Russia
January 30, 1933: minus 75 days = November 16, 1932: Mars conj. Pluto in c. 113°
National-Socialists in Power in Germany
3
The delayed-effect dynamics in all three cases appear to be obvious but the demonstration of the effect of
the conjunction of Mars with Pluto is remarkable. Once the connection was discovered it seemed impossible to
expect anything else in view of the background of the two revolutions.
We have the suspicion that this kind of indentation in the layers of the Sun is ultimately responsible for the
Sun-spots. However, we have not nearly enough evidence yet to confirm this because the necessary calculations
involve rather intricate problems. Therefore we regard what we say here about this matter only as a tentative
suggestion.
The first half of 1947 brought an extraordinary Sun-spot, one of the biggest in the history of modern
astronomy. It was observed and investigated during four disk passages. The first observation was made between
February 4–17. The spot was on the central meridian, seen from the Earth, on February 11, in about 22°
southern latitude of the Sun. (See H. W. Newton’s The Face of the Sun.)
On May 24, 1946, 263 days earlier, the planet Venus was heliocentrically in conjunction with Pluto (c.
131°) and not far from Saturn (c. 117°). This 263 days would correspond to about 10 rotations of the
impression-area of this conjunction in the layers of the Sun and its return into line with Pluto. Considering the
latitude of the later Sun-spot, we assumed rotation-cycles of c. 26 days, to which we added the time that the area
would need to move from Pluto into line with the Earth.
Some time later, on September 7, 1946, Venus (301°) was in opposition to Saturn (c. 121°), which was
about 10 ecliptic degrees away from Pluto (c. 131°). From September 7, 1946, to February 11, 1947, we count
157 days, which would correspond to 6 rotations of the impression-area on the Sun (6 x 26 days) plus 1 day for
moving into line with the Earth, which was in about 142° on February 11.
We ask ourselves whether the Sun-spot of 1947 was not the final result of those earlier impressions on the
layers of the Sun. It is conceivable that Sun-spots are the visible “scars” of the “wounds” that the Sun might
have received earlier. However, we are not yet in a position to give a final answer, although this might be a
possible avenue of approach to the problem.
These discoveries appear to open totally new vistas with regard to the factual relationship between the
cosmos and the Earth with its inhabitants. One can not yet conceive where this will lead to. There might still be
a number of hidden surprises. However, developments and investigations like these described here and others
might in time take the sting out of those old accusations against astrology—that its tenets are chiefly the
heritage of superstitions handed down from bygone ages by an ignorant humanity.
4
Towards New Culture Publications

(No. 1 of an additional Series on the Four Festivals of the Year)
Easter
By John Seeker
(Pen Name for Willi Sucher)
The general decline of the cultural life of civilized humanity has also matured an almost complete inability
to understand and celebrate the great festivals of the Christian year. Therefore it seems to be necessary to open
new gateways for the comprehension of the facts connected with these festivals.
At Easter, Christian humanity commemorates the Death and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. According to
old customs, it is celebrated on the Sunday following the first full Moon in spring.
Modern humanity can no longer comprehend these two facts by means of ordinary cognition. Nowhere in
the world, which is perceived by the senses, is there to be found anything that suggests the possibility of the
resurrection of a human being from death, as it is described in the Gospels. It has gradually become a matter of
faith. Yet modern humanity demands knowledge acceptable to the intellect and not mere belief in the various
Christian confessions. And in proportion, as knowledge cannot penetrate to the real facts behind the historic
event of Easter, this festival is less understood and taken less seriously. Moreover, the fact that the time of
Easter is fixed according to cosmic conditions, it also cannot be comprehended by modern thought. People have
emancipated themselves so much from nature by their technology, that there seems to be no necessity to arrange
any festival in accordance with conditions pertaining to the starry heavens. Therefore, the present tendency is to
do away with the customary moveability of the Easter festival. The moral effect that results from its celebration,
according to cosmic conditions, brings only disturbance into the calculations of the business world. Therefore, it
is proposed to fix it to a certain date, for instance, as the keeping of Christmas is fixed for the 25th of December.
Behind all of this is the fact that Easter has become a matter of mere tradition. Hardly any inner experience
is connected with it, and one could just as well make a fixed holiday of it for the usual kind of seasonal
recreation. It has become a challenge for the modern world, like the other Christian festivals, and we must first
of all decide whether we want to have a mere public holiday instead of Easter, or whether we desire to make it a
festival of true religious devotion and inner strength. But, how can we once again find in the Eastern festival a
source of inner experience and strength?
We can try to look at it from the point of view of the seasons of the year. It takes place in springtime, always
after the Spring Equinox. This is the time of the year when the long, dark, and cold winter nights have been
overcome by the ascending Sun. The days grow longer again, and warmth and light fill the life of the Earth
anew. Nature awakes from her deep sleep in the wintertime, and countless little flowers and leaves come forth
from their imprisonment in seeds and buds. Soon the barren landscape of winter is transformed into a beautiful
carpet of brilliant colors.
Is not springtime a true picture of the power of resurrection inherent in nature? Every year, again the warmth
and light conquer the signs of Death. Winter’s ice and snow are melted away, the frozen soil is softened and
covered with abundant manifestations of life. Even the process of germination provides us with a true picture of
the preceding Death on Good Friday. For millions and millions of seeds buried in the womb of the Earth must
die, so that the reappearance of life is possible.
Thus nature provides us with crutches, as it were, for the understanding of the festival of Good Friday and
Easter. It is not a person who has chosen this time of the year for the celebration of Easter; but the events that
are described in the gospels, have really taken place in springtime, about the time of the Jewish Passover. The
powers of destiny have brought about this coincidence.
Yet, we must confess that the picture of nature in spring only lends us crutches for the understanding of
Easter. They help us along only a certain part of the way towards the comprehension of this festival; but then
they fail. For even though we perceive the picture of resurrection in nature, as thinking beings we know quite
well that all the splendor of nature will fade away in autumn, when the nights grow longer again and darkness
and cold wipe out that beautiful carpet of color and life. Thus the manifestations of nature do not really provide
a picture of resurrection as we desire to find it in connection with Christ. It is a seemingly eternal circle of
destruction and re-creation. Moreover modern, scientifically-minded people know quite well that this circle will
cease to operate in a very far future. People know this, and even try to pre-calculate the time when the planet on
which we live will receive no more warmth and light from the decaying Sun. Then no more vegetation will be
possible on the Earth. Death will overtake Nature. Therefore nature too leaves unanswered the questions that we
must ask when we are confronted with the message of the Easter festival.
We too are involved in the fate of nature, because our body is a part of nature. We know that our body will
one day be worn out; we have to die inevitably, and nothing in the world of our sensory experiences suggest
that there is an imperishable part in us, besides that which vanishes in the course of natural events.
Nevertheless, there is the picture of Christ’s Resurrection. Can it be experienced by modern humanity as a
Truth, beyond the mere traditional records? Our salvation from the ever-turning wheel of nature depends on the
answer to this question. We must say yes, there is an answer, and it can be experienced by each single human
being.
The life of Christ spanned the time between Christmas and Easter. He was born in the Christmas Night, He
died on the Cross on Good Friday, and rose from the grave at Easter. In between these two fundamental events
is a time of 33 years, thirty years up to the baptism in the Jordan and three years of the actual ministry. In the
Christmas Night the impulse of Divine love was born; in the Easter events, 33 years later, this impulse
resurrected and has since dwelled among people for the sake of its realization.
Since that time, this rhythm of 33 years, the rhythm from the birth of an impulse to its resurrection and
realization, is deeply written into the history and activities of humanity. It can no longer be denied, and the
recognition of it can open the gates for the entry of the Easter message into each single human soul, if it is
willing to listen (Rudolf Steiner the great teacher of a New Spiritual Revelation, was the first who emphasized the fact of
the 33-years-rhythni with regard to historical events).
In 1113 the great St. Bernard of Clairvaux entered the monastery of Citeaux as a monk. He took up the strict
discipline of the monastic life with great energy and unerring religious fervor. He performed the exercises to the
point of complete bodily exhaustion. This monastic life as lived in the Middle Ages is no longer suitable for
people today. But for those monks it meant the development of unusual will-forces, far above the will of
ordinary people. Thus the year 1113 was for St. Bernard the time of the birth of tremendous will-forces with
regard to the religious life. It was really a kind of Christ-mas-time for St. Bernard. Thirty-three years later this
impulse of the will, which had been born in 1113, resurrected, and mightily realized itself as a historic impulse
in the world. For in 1146 St. Bernard proclaimed the second Crusade all over Europe, and through his brilliant
religious eloquence, he kindled enthusiasm in thousands of men for this idea.
The failure of the second Crusade is another matter. But the example of St. Bernard shows that such a strong
impulse of the soul may rest for a long time in the bosom of a person, until one day it breaks forth with power,
overcoming all obstacles in its way. It took thirty-three years for this impulse, born in the innermost being of St.
Bernard, to be resurrected in humanity. This time corresponds to the Christ period of life from Christmas till
Easter, and it opens a gateway to the experience of the power of Resurrection, of immortal existence, which
came into the world through Christ Jesus.
But this reality of the development of an impulse of the soul from its Birth to its Resurrection is not only
confined to a human earthly life. It reveals its creative power even still more strongly beyond the boundaries of
life in a mortal body.
Prince Henry of Portugal, who is usually called “the Navigator,” employed all his capacities almost
exclusively in the endeavor to find the sea-passage to India and Eastern Asia. He made several attempts at great
sacrifice, which carried him far down the Western Coast of Africa. Yet, when he died in 1460 (13 Nov.), the
final goal, the rounding of the southern end of Africa, had not yet been achieved. One might say that in the
moment of his death, his impulse, which hitherto he had made his personal affair, became the concern of the
whole of civilized humanity. It was then born, so to speak, into humanity. And thirty-three years after Henry’s
death, in March 1493, Columbus came back from the West and told the astonished world that he had found the
2
passage to India. He did not know then that he had discovered a hitherto unknown continent. His idea was that
if the Earth is a globe, one should be able to establish a passage to India in going East as well as West. He had
chosen the westward way and had discovered America.
In this case, an impulse or an idea had taken hold of a man. He himself could not realize it, and when he died
he left it as a kind of spiritual testament to humanity. Then thirty-three years later it celebrated its resurrection
and realization. However, in fact it turned out differently from the way it had existed in human minds. Instead
of being the passage to India, it became the discovery of a new continent. Thus impulses and ideas sometimes
reveal themselves as having different purposes from those of ordinary human wishes. Just this fact unveils the
independent and real existence of ideas, like objects in the material world. Yet even single human beings can
gain a higher, immortal existence, if they are able to penetrate to their essential nature.
The birth of such impulses in the human soul are sometimes a painful experience, taking place in the midst of
inner despair and depression. The famous Italian sculptor and painter Michelangelo (1475-1564) went through a
most difficult crisis in his life. It was a turning point for him (in 1505), and afterwards he was inclined to moods
of depression and gloom. Even in this, we can recognize the entering of a spiritual impulse into the soul of
Michelangelo. For thirty to thirty-three years later, it revealed and manifested itself majestically in his famous
painting “The Last Judgment” (1535 and later) in the Sistine Chapel. That which had shown itself as heaviness
and depression at the time of its birth had come to its resurrection in the painting as the gigantic imagination of
the judgment of souls by Christ.
None of the Spiritual impulses that enter the world through human souls get lost, although they may be
rejected for a time. People, who have in their destiny the necessary provisions for the conception of such ideas,
may not always be willing to identify themselves with these impulses and to fight for their realization; but ideas
are immortal beings, and they will come again to other souls, and seek their resurrection there.
But how is it with those impulses that seem to be destructive in human history? Their existence and
development also finally fulfill the manifestation and realization of the good. They too are involved in that same
rhythm of thirty-three years. The Crucifixion of Christ took place, according to reliable sources, in the year 33
AD. The Acts of the Apostles tell of the persecution of the first small Christian community by the Jews. This
was the great tragedy of the Jewish people: they denied in Christ Jesus the Messiah whom they had expected
since the very first beginning of their existence as a nation. An impulse of hate was born instead of the
recognition of Christ, and it also developed within a period of thirty-three years. In the Spring of 66 AD, the so-
called Jewish War began, which lasted seven years; and in the midst of which stands the destruction of
Jerusalem and its temple.
In this case, the impulse, born in 33 AD, seems to have resurrected in destruction only. But if one looks at it
more carefully, one can discover in it a great teacher. For many of those souls who were caught in the idea of a
Jewish World Empire in contradiction to the Christ Impulse of Divine love, were taught by the facts and events,
and by their own death, the wrongness of their nationalistic tendencies. Thus Resurrection is not an event that
happened only once, and which is recorded in the Gospels.
It can be experienced again and again in the development of pure spiritual impulses that enter the human
soul. Behind the manifold single impulses, it can be assumed that there lies one great guiding principle. It can
be called the principle of the evolution of humanity, in which all the single Ideas and impulses have their
dwelling. The principle of human evolution may be exalted high above the impulse of a single person. Yet, it is
the unfailing judge of each single spiritual impulse in mankind, whether it be the Idea of the Crusades, the spirit
of Globe-encompassing discovery or artistic fulfillment. In reality, in each human being who is awake for the
performance of some cultural task, such an eternal being comes to life and goes through its development in one
or another way. Single sheep may stray from the guiding hands of the original all-human purpose for a while.
The power of Resurrection, even in its manifestation in the thirty-three years’ rhythm, will call them back,
sooner or later. And what sometimes appears to be a catastrophe instead of a resurrection, may be the necessary
teaching for further evolution.
Therefore the idea cannot be so very strange that, having once gone through developments of this kind,
human spirits come back to Earth again and again in order to purify themselves and to advance in harmony with
the guiding Humanity-principle. A person may have given birth to a certain impulse, which may have
resurrected during that lifetime or only after death. It may not have served the purpose of the evolution of
3
Humanity. Is it then not possible that the soul of such a person comes back into another body, in order to
receive anew the impulse that is akin to him and to develop it further under changed world-conditions? And are
not all human beings under the same fate: that they can never fully achieve what with their highest intentions
they desired to achieve?
But we can notice one fact: the higher the moral quality of the guiding impulse of a human being is, the more,
one might say, is he misunderstood and even persecuted by his contemporaries. Here appears the other side of
Easter: Resurrection is not possible without Good-Friday. The mortal world hates the world of the Ideas, when
it becomes manifest in the higher being of people, because it finally overcomes that which is mortal. Therefore
the mortal world resists that which appears in one’s inner being as its adversary. And only if the mortal gives
way and renounces the desire for permanence, then the eternal in one can shine forth unopposed.
Our higher impulses constitute our Higher Self. It cannot be so, that the Ideas and impulses of human
evolution lead a kind of impersonal existence, and only from time to time settle, as it were, in a human body.
No person on Earth was ever able to evolve and realize creative impulses, who was not able to speak of himself
as an “I” in the highest sense. The “I’’ person and the being of the idea must form a unity, otherwise no
Resurrection is possible. The Idea is only creative as the higher fulfillment of the “1.” One cannot imagine Ideas
working in the world separated from the “l”-person, anymore than creative ideas can manifest themselves in
animals.
Hw is it then with that guiding principle of humanity’s evolution, in which all the single historical impulses
and ideas have their origin and their union? If the single idea and the human “I” are indivisible, must not then a
much greater and universal “I” be the hearer of that united cosmos of creative Ideas, of which the single
impulses are like rays from a Sun?
Furthermore, if those manifold impulses have become incorporated in the mortal sheath of an “I”-person, is it
not possible for that great, universal “I” of the cosmos of creative Ideas has once been incorporated in the
mortal body of a man?
Answering honestly all these questions, it should not be too difficult to perceive in the Christ Jesus of the
Gospels this One exalted Being. For He shows in all the recorded details—and we must confess that they are
only fractions and very much distorted—the archetype of all the described facts of the power of Resurrection in
a human’s higher being. His life was built up during the thirty-three years, which are the foundation of the
Birth-to-Resurrection-rhythm in the life of historical impulses. If that cosmos of creative Ideas, as Divine
beings, was really alive in Him, then the mortal world cannot but have developed the utmost possible hate and
desire for His persecution. And finally only Death, the complete overcoming of the mortal, can have opened the
Gate through which such a fullness of Spiritual Light could gradually resurrect in humanity.
The reasoning of mind may say that the words and deeds of the One of whom the Gospels speak do not
justify one’s seeing in Him such a universal greatness, that He could be regarded as the bearer of the spiritual
cosmos of Ideas. His words and deeds are merely those of a simple man. Such a judgment would only reveal
that it has not comprehended, by a long way, the unfathomable depths of the Gospels. Only ages of human
evolution still to come, will be able to bring the light that which is hidden in those seemingly unpretending
documents to the understanding of humanity.
The celebration of the Easter-festival should unite both these facts: the commemoration of the original Good-
Friday and Easter scenes, as they are described in the Gospels; and the creation of a consciousness for the
spiritual reality in each single human being, through which people are united with the One who manifested the
power of Resurrection. Then Easter will not be a fading commemoration and tradition, but a time of experience
of the universal Spirit of Human Evolution, Who sends His healing rays of spiritual Sun-light into each human
soul. Thus Easter must become a festival of contemplating the purpose of human existence. Such contemplation
leads us to look up to the examples given by those members of the human race who endeavored to realize the
highest evolutionary impulses of humanity, in spite of difficulties, opposition and even persecution. Finally this
can lead to the experience of the One in Whom are present the purified archetypes of all human Ideals and
evolutionary impulses, and Who is the Resurrection and the Life.
Such experience demands cosmic greatness from us. Surely we can only gradually evolve to such a height.
Therefore the Easter festival cannot be determined by earthly factors only, it must be arranged according to
cosmic conditions, and people can more and more become conscious of this necessity. The first Christians, who
4
still lived in the personal memories of the actual Easter events, knew this demand for cosmic greatness. They
arranged the Easter festival on the Sunday following the first full Moon of spring. They had two reasons for
this, and a true commemoration of the first Easter was established.
For the gospels relate that the Crucifixion of Christ took place on the Friday preceding the Jewish Passover.
The Passover was fixed according to the first full Moon after the 21st of March, or the Spring Equinox. Thus
Easter morning, the morning of Resurrection, was the Sunday after this spring full Moon. And as the following
centuries celebrated Easter according to this tradition, it was not only a true commemoration, it was also an
uplifting of the festival to cosmic heights and grandeur.
Only if we will consciously create such a cosmic background behind and above the Easter festival, will we be
able to celebrate it as an event that can give us inner strength and dignity.
5
This group of 15 Articles, published in 1937 - 1938,
in The Modern Mistic and Science Review, Bedford Row, Londen,
were written by Willi Sucher under the name of John Seeker.
They also appear in Willi’s Living Universe, available on this site.
1937
Juli, Astrology I - Prenatal Astrology

August, Astrology II - Looking Through the Horoscope of Birth
September, Astrology III - Significance of the Prenatal Events Among the Stars
Oktober, Astrology III (cont.) - Prenatal Horoscope
December, The Riddle of Emanuel Swedenborg
December, The Gateway of the moon
The Modern Mystic and Science Review
Article by Willi Sucher, July 1937
ASTROLOGY I - PRENATAL ASTROLOGY

There are some people alive today who are able to appreciate the starry heavens in a peculiarly personal,
inward, and intimate way. When in moments of solitude and stillness they look up to the twinkling multitude,
there is at times the accompanying feeling that the heavens might reveal their penetrative tones and secret
harmonies whose personal correspondences are to be found only in the depths of the soul. Those who can sense
these cosmic overtones are a gradually decreasing number; such harmonies are part of a stream that belongs to a
past increasingly difficult of contact the more modern science takes possession of the Earth.
In the 16th century, Nostradamus possessed powers of perception which to us are almost incomprehensible.
To him the sky was a script in which he read time-embracing prophecies of the destinies of peoples and
generations yet to come; prophecies that continued to be fulfilled up to the time of the French Revolution.
There appeared to be stored in him all the star-lore of the ancient Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Greeks.
The priests in the Mystery Temples unveiled the history—past and future—of the world and of humanity by
their knowledge of the stars. Only a small part of their immense wisdom lay in knowledge of the connection
between humanity and the world of stars as portrayed by the ordinary birth-chart. They noted, for instance, the
position of the Moon, whether it was waxing or waning, in what sign of the Zodiac it stood, further indices of
the destiny of the Earth, and the character and capabilities of the subject. With the decay of the ancient
mysteries, the ability of the old initiates correspondingly deteriorated; it has been lost in a maze of records,
formulae, and rules that, in the course of transit through the centuries, can no longer be understood. Only the
remnants of the wisdom possessed by the ancients, in its once magnificent fullness, is recognizable in modern
astrology.
The immediate source of the inspiration drawn on by the ancient Initiates is of necessity closed to us.
Natural science has become the direction of the search for knowledge during the last four centuries—a direction
that also sets limits to the amount of knowledge attainable by the method. There is no correspondence between
modern astronomy and the wisdom of the ancients. Modern scientific teachings change rapidly, yet the
underlying spirit that imbues them—a sincere inner quest for knowledge—is that with which we must approach
astrology if we would recapture the ancient wisdom. For the impulse which urges science is a natural and
discerning love of the Earth. It is true that because of it the heavens have been lost, but they can be regained
when science infuses into its researches knowledge of the Spirit.
In embryology, a science of significance in connection with astrology, great strides have been made. The
origin and growth of both animal and human embryo has been the subject of much laborious research. True,
much remains in darkness especially about early stages of embryonic development—a period of primary
importance and of far-reaching effects on the human being after birth. Indeed, the question arises whether the
actual time of birth (regarded by the ancients as fundamental to their star-wisdom) is not, after all, of only
secondary importance. In studying the influence of heavenly bodies on human beings, one may wonder
whether the time of conception and succeeding embryonic stages are not of greater significance than the
constellation at birth. Birth only means that the young life has attained its separate existence; it is released from
the mother.
When we comprehend what has been left to us by tradition, we shall see that the ancient star-sages were
well aware of prenatal events in their more cosmic-spiritual aspect. The almost mythical records from Egyptian
times speak of the hermetic star-wisdom and refer to Thoth or Hermes, the legendary founder of the ancient
Egyptian culture. Through the clairvoyant consciousness, which in those times humanity still possessed, this
wisdom shed light on the horoscope of birth, particularly in the relation of the Sun, Moon and Earth. From an
understanding of those relationships, they were able to deduce the real beginning of embryonic development
and to appreciate the particular aspects which were being woven by the cosmos into the new human organism
just coming into existence. Understood in the light of this knowledge, the constellation of birth opens up for us
a key to the spiritual nature and powers of the universe which form and mold the real being we bring with us
through the gate of birth into earthly existence.
The constellation of stars at the moment of birth illumines the human being from three aspects: the Moon,
Sun, and Saturn, revealing deep spiritual connections in their relation to the Earth. At the moment of birth, the
Moon is either visible above or invisible below the horizon; its relation to the Sun is either waxing or waning.
With these facts as a basis, it is possible in each individual case to go back to the time of conception. In this
way we are led to a certain constellation lying approximately 273 days prior to actual birth—though this period
varies in individual cases. (Technical details accompanied by examples will be given in a later article.) The
physiological aspect of birth is still very much of a mystery, but those interested in astrology will probably
agree that the constellation at the moment of conception, for the purposes of our present study, is probably of
great significance. Under its influence a new life is beginning to take form. Whoever is familiar with the
development of the embryo will also agree that the precise moment of conception is vital, so it will be worth our
while to study cosmic conditions prevailing at the time. From that moment it will be necessary to study the
flowing cosmic life for the next nine months, to observe the path of the Sun through the signs of the Zodiac
together with those of the planets and their retrogressions and so on, all coinciding (approximately) to ten
revolutions of the Moon around the Earth.
These Lunar revolutions are of the utmost importance. They are precursors of the subsequent rhythmical
epochs of the Earth-life to come—the whole cosmic process is pictured in them. But besides gaining an insight
into the earthly life of the new human being, we shall have a picture of its destiny in which are indicated its
potentialities, hindrances, and the conditions which will prevail at varying periods of its life. Even tendencies to
illness and health will be disclosed. Prenatal cosmic phenomena portray the creative element in the human
being, the so-called etheric body, which throughout the Earth-life accompanies the physical body bringing about
its development and changes and guards it against its tendency to decay. All this has very much to do with the
Moon, for the Moon translates the cosmic, spiritual nucleus into events in time. This fact could well be termed
the Moon Mystery of the human being.
We are able to go further still. Our connection with the Moon enables us to understand the finer qualities of
the organism, including all there is concerning heredity. We have particular and important relationships with
the Sun, not only in its objective sense as a fiery, heavenly body but in the sense that it is a solar entity
expressing itself in an appointed orbit. We know that the apparent path of the Sun is a very important cosmic
reality. The Sun-sphere leads us to a [spiritual] constellation which, though it has a mathematical relationship
to the birth constellation, is very largely independent of it in point of time. It can, in fact, appear either before
or after birth, but greater details of this will be given in future articles. This constellation has a deep
correspondence with the soul and the essential nature of being; it reveals the fundamental outlook on the world.
It has already been shown that every possible world-conception and philosophy can be related to one or other of
the signs of the Zodiac. (See Human and Cosmic Thought by Rudolf Steiner.) Idealism, as a philosophy can be
related to Aries, the logical outlook with Jupiter, and so on. If then, one is an idealist but tends toward a logical
expression of it, it can be said that one has Jupiter in Aries as a spiritual horoscope in contradistinction to the
mathematical precision of the ordinary horoscope of birth.
In order to determine this spiritual constellation it was necessary to study actual lives. It became apparent
that it could be deduced with mathematical accuracy from the constellation of birth. Proceeding from certain
facts and mathematical conditions relating to Saturn at the time of birth, a
constellation can be found which tells us much about the passing of the
human individuality through previous incarnations. This aspect of the
heavens stands in almost timeless sublimity above the horoscope.
The diagram here will help to make the cosmic relationships more
clear, and from it we shall try to work out exact details. In the first
place, we have the acknowledged fact of reincarnation of the
individuality plunging ever and again into epochs of Earth-evolution at
particular times suited to its development. Each soul is preparing for its next
Earth life during the periods between incarnations; therefore, we may assume a
2
certain direction through all successive incarnations, indicated in the diagram by the lines going toward birth.
After entry through the gate of birth, nothing remains in the consciousness to remind the human being of its
sojourn in more spiritual worlds. Yet there is a way to penetrate the veil of the stellar constellation ruling at the
time of birth, the rending of which tells of the immense preparation that was undergone to make this earthly life
possible. This is indicated in the three circles of the diagram.
All this can be found in the mathematical relationships of the constellation of birth. To begin with, light is
shed on the prenatal cosmic influences which correspond to the embryonic development. There is also reflected
in this constellation expressive pictures of the bodily nature in its widest sense, the destiny that has found
concrete expression in the form of the body. The innermost circle in the diagram, the Moon Mystery of the
human being, indicates this.
Furthermore, we are given an insight into the life of the human soul in the realms of Divine Spiritual
Beings. This is reflected in the Sun constellation. A person's philosophy—the “last echo of one’s former union
with the world of the Gods”—is revealed in it. A philosophy that is, so to speak, the inheritance of the
Thoughts of the Gods—second circle in the diagram. Finally, from far cosmic distances, there streams into the
birth-constellation from a constellation related to the Saturn-sphere—outer circle—the influences of past Earth-
lives.
Quite another aspect of the human being's relationship to the stars reveals itself in the constellation at the
moment of death. Steiner very well understood this reality and has pointed out that the “horoscope of death” is
of great importance to the individual who has passed again into the spiritual world. He further asserts that the
contemplation of the horoscope brings to those still living on Earth a beautiful and selfless understanding of the
existence of those who have passed on. Contemplation of the horoscope of birth, on the other hand, is too often
an expression of human egoism.
Birth and death may be likened to the rhythm of breathing. When entering into life on Earth, we take in, as
in a mighty breath, the ingredients of the cosmos and of the Earth in order to form our own organism from
them. At death we breathe out our being again into the surrounding spheres, our physical body is seized by the
decaying powers of Earth, and our super-physical being is given back again to cosmic spiritual spaces.
Between these two poles of in-breathing at birth and out-breathing at death, there is an earthly life which
changes and evolves the substances from the Earth and from the cosmos—changes them right down into our
physical organism. As a result of past destiny, we wrestle and strive with what we have brought with us; that is
our task. In order to rise above the waves of outward events and demands, the human “I” must work in the finer
spheres of the temperament and inclinations. The human being's tendency toward a certain philosophy of life is
an inheritance, so to speak, from the gods, but the hard facts of earthly life impel us to widen and deepen our
philosophy, to change and develop our point of view, and to infuse into it a quality of all-embracing
universality. The ensuing developments influence our bodily nature through illness and the like; we become
other than we were. The fruits from all these strivings and transformations become visible in the constellation
of the stars at the moment of death.
Spiritual science says that, after death, the newly released soul experiences its past life all at once as in a
picture that passes before it. Many people who have been very near death and only just saved at the last
moment have told how their whole lives, concentrated in their most important points, have stood before them as
great memory-pictures. Something like this results from a study of the death-horoscope. In it are inscribed the
most significant events in the life of the individual who has passed on.
As the birth-constellation, in the way described, points backward into the pre-physical existence of the
human being, so does the death-constellation point forward into the existence of the soul after death. The death-
constellation also has an important connection with the prenatal cosmic events—those that took place during the
development of the embryo—as well as pointing to an event that is related to the constellation of the Sun-sphere
about the time of birth referred to above. Just as this latter constellation in the Sun-sphere is a symbol of the
dismissal of the soul from the lap of the gods, so in the constellation after death is mirrored the return of the
soul into the sphere of the gods after divesting itself of the last remains of Earth existence. Indeed, it is often
only long after death that earthly strivings arrive at fruition. In this constellation, which may appear many years
after death but which arises with mathematical consistency from the positions of the stars at the time of death,
all that is pure and ripe enough to be woven into future forms of Earth destiny is raised into cosmic heights.
3
Article by Willi Sucher, August 1937
ASTROLOGY II
LOOKING THROUGH THE HOROSCOPE OF BIRTH
It has been pointed out in the preceding article that in the light of modern scientific knowledge it is scarcely
tenable to regard birth alone as the foundation for astrological inquiry. Research in embryology has shown that
the development of the germ, especially in the very early stages, is of more far-reaching significance than actual
birth. Thus, if astrology is to have its place in modern times, we must use the horoscope of birth as a starting
point for the penetration of those events which take place in the starry world during the period before birth.
The birth constellation is rather like the physiognomy of a human being. Even the most untrained person
will perceive how many things lie concealed there behind the features; things of importance with regard to the
human being's character, the destinies one has undergone, and so on. The human physiognomy can be felt as a
gateway to the understanding of the individual behind it. So it is with the birth constellation. We must pass
through it if we would reach knowledge of the human being's coming into existence during the time before
birth. How can we do this?
There exists an ancient Rule handed down to us by the Egyptians. It is the so-called Hermetic Rule. It
appears long before the beginning of the Christian era in the almost mythical writings of the Egyptian priests
Nechepso and Petosiris. This Rule gives valuable indications for a wider, less rigid conception of the birth
constellation so that it may be understood in its connection with the prenatal events. The kernel of it is as
follows:
1. If the Moon was waxing at birth, then at the so-
called epoch of conception—that is, approximately 273
days before birth—the Moon was in that place in the
Zodiac which appears in the ascendant (on the eastern
horizon) in the horoscope of birth.
2. If the Moon was waning at birth, then at the epoch
of conception it was in that place in the Zodiac which
appears in the descendant (on the western horizon) in the
horoscope of birth. This period of 273 days corresponds
approximately to the duration of a normal embryo-
development, though in the case of an abnormally short
pregnancy, as with seven-month children, it would be
correspondingly shorter.
Four possibilities arise when this Rule is used in
practical astrology. These we will illustrate in four drawings.
These are the four possible conditions for a horoscope of
birth. In the first example the Moon is waxing and above the horizon (designated by the horizontal line from
ascendant to descendant). Then in the so-called epoch, the Moon will have stood in the part of the heavens
which is in the ascendant, i.e., in this case in the sign of Libra. From there, in approximately 273 days it has
moved to its place in the horoscope, which is in Leo. It has not quite come back to its starting-point in Libra. To
return to Libra, it will take exactly 273 days, for this time corresponds to ten whole revolutions of the Moon
through the Zodiac (10 times 27.3 days). Thus in the first example the epoch is about four days short of the 273
days; namely, the four days that the Moon will take to go on from Leo to Libra.
In the second example the Moon is waxing but below the horizon. According to the Hermetic Rule, at the
epoch of conception it was at the place that is in the ascendant at birth—which is again in Libra. From there in
273 days it returned to Libra, but the birth took place a few days later, so that in this case the period of 273 days
will be lengthened by the days taken by the Moon to go on from Libra to Capricorn.
In the third and fourth drawings the Moon is waning. At the epoch of conception it will have been at the
place in the Zodiac that is in the descendant at the time of birth, which is in Aries. Now in the third drawing the
Moon is above the horizon in the horoscope of birth and we must assume that it took a little longer than the 273
days, namely, the time it took to go on to Gemini. In the fourth case, on the other hand, it took less than 273
days, the number of days it will take to go on from Aquarius to Aries.
Now it will readily be understood that the epoch referred to in the Hermetic Rule signifies a moment of time
somewhere about the period of conception. It is clear that in the case of a seven-months' child we must not take
ten Lunar cycles (10 times 27.3 = 273 days) but eight (8 times 27.3: 218 days) as a standard average.
These calculations do not, however, tell us whether the moment of the epoch coincides exactly with that of
physical conception. The manifold processes connected with conception are indeed not yet so tangible in the
present stage of scientific knowledge, nor is it necessary that they should be so from the astrological point of
view. Spiritual Science sees conception as a kind of focus or radiating point for a whole world of cosmic
spiritual events, and it is these which are reflected, pictured in a sense, in the moment of the epoch. Conception
indicates a precise physical point in the line of development, while the epoch refers to a whole sphere of
events—even a sphere in time.
That the Moon stands, at the epoch of conception, in the place in the Zodiac that is at the ascendant (or
descendant) at the time of birth, is most significant. It means that the ascendant or descendant is like a picture of
a bridge leading inward from those cosmic regions in which the Moon was standing in the very first stages of
prenatal development, a bridge uniting all that belongs to the sphere of the Moon with the earthly sphere. It is
clear that this kind of astrological imagination does not in any way deny the classical traditions, but it helps us
to penetrate what is made manifest in the horoscope of birth with a more active knowledge. For the ascendant or
descendant will now appear to us like a pathway along which the human being is led: out of a fine ethereal
condition in the Moon-sphere, through all the embryonic development, into the more solid element of Earth—a
process which reaches a certain culmination in the moment of birth. In short,
the ascendant or descendant is a picture of the way in which the etheric
human being, the so-called ether-body, enters into the physical human
being. The astrological notion of the ascendant is thus enlarged to a far
more real and concrete world of facts, as regards the human being's
entry into life. This will be shown with the help of examples. We will
apply it first to a historic example, in the horoscope of Richard
Wagner.
Richard Wagner's birth took place on May 22, 1813. At this time the
following constellation was present in the diagram. The so-called
astrological Houses have been purposely left out of this drawing, for the
main aim of these articles is to build up from simple beginnings and to
understand each step as we go. Only the line of the horizon is indicated by the
ascendant.
To comprehend the language of this constellation without falling back too much on mere tradition, we must
look through it to what is at work in the background, i.e., to the forces which have been leading up to the
moment of birth, as to a culminating point. Once again, it is as though we were to see through the physiognomy
of a human being to the spiritual forming powers that are beneath it.
We will first look for the epoch with the help of the Hermetic Rule. The Moon is waning and above the
horizon; therefore, the third case (see above) comes into question. At the epoch the Moon must have been in the
descendant of the horoscope of birth—in Sagittarius. If from the time of birth, when the Moon is in Aquarius,
we go 273 days backward, we will have followed the Moon back for ten whole revolutions and will have
arrived at Aquarius once more. But we are looking for the Moon in Sagittarius, so we must go back a little more
than 273 days, and at last on August 15, 1812 we find the Moon in Sagittarius. This gives us the time of the
epoch—or more correctly, of the beginning of the epoch.
There was a certain constellation of the planets present at this moment. During the subsequent period until
the date of birth on May 22, 1813, the constellations undergo great changes. All these events in the cosmos will
be made clear in the next drawing.
2
In this drawing below we have added something new, namely, the real
Zodiac of the fixed stars—the actual constellations of the Zodiac
visible in the starry heavens. These are indicated in the outer circle,
each constellation being shown more or less in its actual extent.
Over the Zodiac of the ecliptic, which is indicated in the inner
circle, this Zodiac of the fixed stars is a distinct reality. The
Zodiac of the ecliptic, as is well known, begins at the vernal point
(a point determined by the rhythms of the seasons) and from
thence divides the yearly path of the Sun into twelve equal sectors.
The vernal point is known as Aries and from here onward the
succeeding sectors are named in order after the twelve signs of the
Zodiac. Now the actual Zodiac of the fixed stars is to some extent
independent of this ecliptic circle, for as a result of the precession of
the equinoxes, the real constellations and the corresponding signs of
the ecliptic no longer coincide, and they will do so less and less in the
future. Thus, for example, when we look toward that portion of the Sun's orbit
which is designated Aries, the actual constellation we see there is not Aries but Pisces. In the astrological
science of the future, it will be necessary to take into account the real constellations as well as the signs of the
ecliptic.
In the drawing the positions of the planets at the beginning of the epoch on August 15, 1812 are indicated
within the outer circle. There is a conjunction between Jupiter and Venus at the transition from Gemini to
Cancer. There is also a conjunction of the Sun and Mars in Leo, Mercury is passing from Leo to Virgo, and
Saturn is in Sagittarius. During the period of prenatal development until May 22, 1813, the planets move
forward through the Zodiac, and their several paths are shown in the drawing by the corresponding circular arcs,
or loop-curves in the case of Jupiter or Saturn. Saturn is retrogressive at the beginning and at the end and Jupiter
about the middle of the prenatal epoch. The path of Mars is indicated thus --------, that of the Sun _____, of
Venus …….., and of Mercury + + + + +.
We see that by proceeding in this way an extremely many-sided picture is formed. The whole of it appears
as a great ebb and flow of cosmic movement, and a wealth of phenomena present themselves, even if we only
take into consideration the conjunctions of the planets during this whole period. There are three things
especially that we must consider if we would gather up the picture of this flow and movement into a certain
whole. They are the movements of the Moon, Sun, and Saturn during this prenatal time. We have already seen
that in the time from August 15, 1812 till May 22, 1813, the Moon has gone from Sagittarius (that is, the
ecliptic sign of Sagittarius) to Aquarius. Ten Lunar cycles lie between these times and also the small additional
way from Sagittarius to Aquarius. Thus, on an average the Moon will have passed each planet about ten times
and on each occasion will have met it at another point in the cosmos, for the planet too has its own movement.
In the most manifold ways, the forces of the planets are taken hold of and reflected by the Moon into the Earth-
sphere. This is an extremely important point and will presently lead us to far deeper insight.
If we consider the path of the Sun and the adjoining paths of Mercury and Venus, we have the impression
that they have not covered a portion of the Zodiac. There remains a kind of open space in the picture. In the
horoscope of Richard Wagner this is quite evident and simple, but in other cases it may be far more irregular;
Venus, for example, may almost close this open space. This fact can also tell us many valuable things; it is more
connected with the human being as an earthly personality, even our outward appearance. On the other hand, the
Moon with its prenatal revolutions pictures the whole process of embodiment of the super-sensible human being
into the physical organism. Saturn, helped in a sense by Jupiter and Mars, stands far in the background of all
these events, not passively but in great cosmic quiet. Saturn moves far slower than the other planets do, and
above all Saturn brings the great drama of destiny into our existence.
In the following articles, linking on to what we have built up so far, we will set forth the main points in the
biography of Richard Wagner so that we may see how this Earth-life was mirrored in the cosmic picture. To this
end the rather extensive preparation we have undergone was necessary, for we consciously desire, above all, to
understand the cosmic facts and their relations.
3
Article by Willi Sucher, September 1937
ASTROLOGY III
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PRENATAL EVENTS AMONG THE STARS
In the previous article we discovered, with the help of the Hermetic Rule, how it is possible to find a certain
prenatal constellation—nay more, a living system of constellations all in relation to each other. It will now be
our task to bring these cosmic facts into connection with the earthly life of a human being.
We will began with the case of Richard Wagner. Between August 15, 1812 (constellation of the prenatal
epoch) and May 22, 1813 (the date of Wagner's birth) the Moon had circled ten times fully round the Zodiac
and had gone on through the small space between Sagittarius and Aquarius. We also took into consideration the
paths of the planets and of the Sun. Herein we found the necessary key, enabling us to enter into these relations
in a real way.
Experience itself has shown that the lunar cycles in this prenatal time are like reflected pictures, as it were,
foretelling the subsequent rhythms of our earthly life. Take once again the example of Richard Wagner. In the
prenatal constellation of August 15, 1812, the Moon took its start from the sign of , behind which was the real
constellation of Scorpio. Following the Moon in its further course through 27.3 days, we come again to the
Moon in . This first of the prenatal lunar cycles is related to the period in Wagner's Earth-life when he was
from one to seven years old. The next lunar cycle, leading once more after 27.3 days to the starting-point in ,
is a reflection of the life-period from seven to fourteen years. Each of the subsequent lunar cycles, in this way,
represents a further period of seven years. In the approximately ten prenatal lunar cycles, there are about
seventy years that are prefigured (ten times seven years). Seventy years represent a certain ideal average for the
length of human life.
This relation of the prenatal lunar cycles to the septennial periods of subsequent earthly life is a completely
new [concept in astrology]. We are not, however, attempting to supplant other relationships that may be spoken
of in classical astrology. The so-called astrological directions, for example, represent another way of relating the
events in the starry heavens to the course of life in time. Later descriptions will show this point of view also to
be justified, as it will be possible to recognize its deeper spiritual background.
This correspondence of the prenatal period with the subsequent time-rhythms gives rise to an expressive
picture of the drama of human life. In Richard Wagner's case, at the beginning of each new cycle, the Moon
comes once again into the constellation of Scorpio. From this we can surmise that this personality, at the
beginning of each new seven-year period of life—at the ages, for example, of twenty-one, twenty-eight and
thirty-five years—will have to undergo a difficult time in his life; Scorpio is difficult indeed. We shall find this
confirmed to some extent when we consider his biography.
Yet the Moon-rhythms by themselves would only give us indications of something that should repeat itself
monotonously about ten times—dull and invariable. It is due to the other planets that it is not so. These planets,
too, have had their dramatic meetings and relationships to one another in the whole time before birth; thereby,
the regular repeated rhythms of the lunar cycles are given a more individual character.
Take, for example, the beginning of the sixth Moon-cycle in the prenatal constellations of Richard Wagner,
December 30, 1812. Until this moment the Moon—beginning in on August 15, 1812—has passed five times
completely around the Zodiac and is about to commence the sixth cycle. A few days later, on January 2, 1813, it
is New Moon—that is, the Moon passes before the Sun, which at this time is in the sign of . At the same time
the Sun is in conjunction with Saturn, so that we have the following picture in the cosmos: Moon, Sun, and
Saturn are at this moment one behind the other, and all of them are in the sign of , behind which is the real
constellation of Sagittarius.
At this moment, therefore, something of individual and unique significance is taking place in the prenatal
development, and as it is at the beginning of the sixth lunar cycle, it will be a reflection of events in Richard
Wagner's life about the change from the fifth to the sixth seven-year period. We shall find this confirmed, but
first we will consider a few more of the events in this way that took place in the starry worlds during the
prenatal period.
At the beginning of the seventh lunar cycle, on January 27, 1813, there was a conjunction of Saturn and
Mercury. This would be related to the forty-second or forty-third year of Wagner's life. A few days later, on
February 3, 1813, Venus passed before Saturn. About this time the Moon had already gone beyond its starting-
point in , for it was now in , having accomplished about two-sevenths of a fresh Moon-cycle. The time of
life here indicated is, therefore, given by 42 + 2 years = 44 years. The dramatic significance of this moment is
indicated by the conjunction of Venus and Saturn. Finally, not long before birth—on April 20, 1813—there was
a conjunction of Mars and Saturn. The Moon had already begun its tenth prenatal cycle and stood before Mars
and Saturn in . We are reminded of the former case when Moon, Mars, and Saturn were together, only it is
now the Sun in place of Mars. Since it is at the beginning of the tenth lunar cycle, we shall relate it to the sixty-
fourth year of Wagner's life.
Manifold other relations of the planets during the prenatal period might be observed in like manner, for we
have only been considering the conjunctions of Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars respectively with Saturn.
Taking all other aspects into account, we should obtain a highly intricate picture. We have discovered four
essential moments:
Beside these cosmic facts we must now place the actual biography of Richard Wagner: In the year 1849
Wagner came into a very difficult situation. He had taken an active part in the revolution which broke out in
Dresden. The revolutionaries were defeated and Wagner was obliged to flee to Switzerland, which was the
beginning of a long and arduous period of exile for him. In their more outward aspect, these events came very
near to the destruction of his physical existence, but they were no less important in their spiritual aspect. This
was about the middle of Wagner's life, and it is as though at this moment two different beings were meeting and
wrestling with one another in his inner life. Wagner was one of those men who are strong enough and brave
enough to imprint the higher mythical reality of their true self upon the ordinary lower human nature.
These two—the lower man, and the higher man who belongs to the future—were in this year in a peculiar
relation to one another in Wagner's life. His share in revolutionary conflict is a symptom of it. He bore within
him the strong will to bring to birth a new form of art, one which should bear the human being upward and on to
a new and hitherto undivined level of existence. But in the many years of struggle and bitter disappointment
until then, he had experienced all the hindrances to which the lower person is subject. In a radical convulsion of
the existing social order, he thought he saw the preparing of the ways along which humanity should rise to a
higher level, in harmony with the artistic ideals which he felt within himself. The course of events showed this
assumption to be wrong, and Richard Wagner had to suffer for it. The year 1849 represents a deep incision in
his life. Henceforth, he was to work inexorably at the realization of his artistic ideal, leaving the ordinary, the
merely civic man, the citizen behind him. Indeed, at this moment the civil community to which he had belonged
drove him into banishment and exile. He was pursued for the part that he had played in the revolution, and
many years were to elapse before he could again set foot upon his native German soil.
These events, as I said, are reflected in the prenatal conjunction of Saturn and Sun in the constellation of
Sagittarius. How shall we relate this situation in the human being's destiny with the cosmic data? Old
astrological rules will not avail us here, for we are dealing with an altogether new astrological conception. We
must look for other ways and methods.
2
In the first place we shall observe that the conjunction took place in the constellation of Sagittarius for
which the symbol is used. Let us now try to enter rather more deeply into the symbolic language of the
Zodiacal signs. The Sagittarius arrow indicates something like a movement; a direction leading toward a certain
goal. To make the language clearer and more living to us, we may perhaps transform the symbol into , as it
were a steep and winding uphill path.
Saturn was in the sphere of Sagittarius during the whole of Wagner's embryo-development. Now, Saturn has
the character of heaviness; it is indeed related to the metal lead. It is above all the representative of fate; of
destiny inexorable as the course of time itself. Saturn in Sagittarius will, therefore, indicate a pathway of
development toward a certain goal, yet steep and arduous and even painful. Then the Sun comes before Saturn,
which has the center and the periphery in equal balance as is shown in the Sun symbol . The Sun comes
hither from the constellation of Leo, connected, we may well imagine, with an element of strength and action.
The Sun in conjunction with Mars in Leo (as it was in the constellation of the prenatal epoch, August 15, 1812)
is a true picture of the remarkable energy of Wagner's nature. For the conjunction of the Sun and Mars signifies,
in this regard, an enhancement of active power, the physiological significance of this conjunction
notwithstanding.
When, therefore, the Sun passes before Saturn in Sagittarius, it is made possible for this great energy in
action, directed as it is in Wagner's being to an artistic ideal for the future of humanity, to be purified and
transmuted to a higher level. This is what happened in the events of 1849.
In like manner we should have to understand the passage of the other planets Mercury, Venus, and Mars
before Saturn. All these are pictures of successive stages in an arduous and uphill way of destiny, from out of
which, however, the outstanding genius of Richard Wagner is able to bring forth his true creative power.
The passage of Mercury before Saturn is connected with the year 1855, approximately speaking (see the
table). Wagner was in Zurich at this time. The tragedy of the three women who played a decisive part in his life
was coming to a head. In the first place he was growing more and more estranged from Minna Wagner, who
until then had been his faithful companion, in her own way, through all the difficulties of his life. The very
diverse tendencies of their two lives drew them ever more apart from one another. Moreover, it was about this
time that Mathilde Wesendonk came into Wagner's life in a deeply impressive way. Tristan and Isolde is at
once the picture and the fruit of the deep emotions and far-reaching inner experiences he underwent with her.
Finally, it was in these same years that Cosima Buelow came into relation with him. It was Cosima who was to
help him carry his life's work to a conclusion.
Looking at Wagner's life in this way, we are led to a
very remarkable aspect, which may perhaps be indicated
in a diagram:
It was in 1834-5 that Richard Wagner met with Minna
Planer, who became his wife. Approximately 3 x 7 = 21 years elapsed from then until the year 1855 of which
we have now been speaking. In between, there were the events of 1842 and 1849. In 1842, having suffered
times of great privation, Wagner came back from Paris to Dresden, and 1849 was the time of his dramatic
departure from Dresden—his flight into Switzerland. Comparing these three cycles of seven years—as indicated
in the drawing—we see that about the middle of the fifth septennial period (28-35) there was a turning point in
Wagner's life. Each subsequent event is like a kind of reflection of a corresponding event before this turning
point, yet on a higher level. Thus the return from Paris, where he had not been made altogether welcome,
appears again in a changed form in the flight of 1849. The first experience with Minna Planer, in 1834, is
transformed into the culmination of the year 1855. We can gain some idea of the overwhelming inner changes
that must have taken place in this human soul about the age of 42, (that is in 1855) changes which can only be
spoken of with great reserve but which were certainly of deep significance for his creation. The possibility of
these deep changes was rooted in all those events which were prefigured in the prenatal life in the conjunction
of Mercury and Saturn.
The passage of Venus before Saturn is related in like manner to the year 1857, when the events which we
referred to in relation to Mercury reached their culmination, while at the same time another and altogether new
element came in. On Good Friday 1857, after a long period of outer and inner darkness, Richard Wagner had a
profound experience of new life in the rising Sun, the opening of spring-time. He remembered of a sudden how
3
once before the thought of Good Friday had come to him when reading Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parsifal.
From out of this impression he quickly conceived his own drama of Parsifal, destined in a unique way to crown
his entire life's work.
This event had found its reflection in the prenatal constellations of Venus. On August 15, 1812, Venus had
been in conjunction with Jupiter at the beginning of the constellation of Cancer. Passing subsequently before
Saturn, the Venus influence was mightily enhanced by the profound and difficult
experiences which were to come in the year 1857, thereby transforming the Cancer symbol into a
picture of the cosmic Spirit coming in from a primeval past, passing through the present age of
human life and reaching outward again into the cosmic future of the Earth:
The Cancer symbol may also be taken as a picture of two spirals passing one into the other—one with an
involving movement and the other one more with an evolving movement, signifying the perpetual and living
passage from the past into the future.
We need only select from Wagner's Parsifal the three characters of Titurel, Amfortas, and Parsifal himself,
and the picture becomes alive. Titurel represents the cosmic past, Amfortas the present time of human evolution
in the midst of crisis and suffering, and Parsifal the healing spirit of the Earth's future, sustained by the deep
power of the Holy Grail.
Parsifal was Richard Wagner's in-born goal in life, to be attained in a long and weary pilgrimage: in 1882
when the finished drama was presented for the first time his life was fulfilled; the next year, in 1883, he left the
Earth. This final step toward perfection was reflected in the prenatal conjunction of Saturn and Mars, related by
virtue of the lunar cycles to the year 1876-7. In the year 1876, The Ring was performed for the first time at
Bayreuth. In 1877, the text of the Parsifal poem was completed. The first complete performance of the Ring des
Nibelungen may be regarded as the climax of a long epoch in Richard Wagner's inner evolution. Once again, it
was an epoch of about three times seven years (1857-77), and only when this period was ended was he in a
position to finish the text of Parsifal and to begin putting it to music. Therefore Mars, which was conjunct the
Sun in the prenatal epoch on August 15, 1812 and represented, as it were, a higher synthesis of creative energy,
had to wait longest of all for fulfillment. Yet, at long last, this was to be the crown of Richard Wagner's life
work.
Thus in the prenatal constellation of a human being, seen in relation to the lunar cycles, we have something
like a pre-figured and prophetic plan of the Earth-life that is about to begin. It is indeed a highly complex
organism woven out of the spiritual essences of the cosmos, formed in a fully individual way for every single
human life, and incorporated into the human being's earthly nature. Nor does this delicate and cosmic entity
work in the human being as a mere abstract power or decree of fate. It is a living reality, helping to form and
shape even the physical body itself. In its effects, we can detect this body of the stars even in the building of the
organs of the body, in illnesses, and tendencies to illness. It is itself a body answering to the physical body upon
a higher level. We may relate it to what is known in occultism as the etheric body.
Yet this body, woven as it is out of the forces of the stars, is no more than a pre-figured plan of the coming
Earth-life. It is like the map of a country. We can map out our journey in a particular direction, binding
ourselves to some extent by such resolve, yet for our inner experience of the landscape we are never bound.
From the impressions which we receive with our senses as we go upon our way, we can arouse within ourselves
all that the inner life and imagination of the soul makes possible. The more alive we are, the more we shall
receive. So, too, there cannot be any absolute determination of the course of human life by the world of stars.
4
Article by Willi Sucher, October 1937
THE PRENATAL HOROSCOPE - (continued from Astrology III)
The events in the planetary spheres during the human being's embryonic development, as we have seen,
picture the ether-body or body of cosmic forces which is to permeate and vitalize the physical. On the one hand
we have the manifold variety of cosmic phenomena, the coming together and going apart again of the different
planets, their conjunctions, oppositions and so on. During this time the planetary world undergoes a certain
evolution. Constellations take place which can only happen once in the course of a great Platonic year. All this
is happening between the prenatal epoch, which is on the average 273 days before birth, and the moment of
birth itself. On the other hand, through the cycles of the Moon, this whole planetary drama is brought into a
definite relation to the temporal course and rhythm of the human being's coming life on Earth. The living,
flowing movement of the planetary system is, as it were, recorded in the approximately ten prenatal lunar
cycles, much as an earthly course of events might be recorded on a film. The individualized starry organization,
which is thus formed in the prenatal period, has real and lasting significance for the entire life of a human being.
Separated, in a manner of speaking, from its cosmic origin, it becomes in us an independent organization, a
body in time—we call it the etheric body.
The etheric body takes hold of the physical body at an initial moment, brings it into a definite course of
organic development in time, and directs it toward a certain goal. It wrests the material substance away from its
natural tendency to disintegration and brings it into a stream of development, metamorphosis, and progress. By
virtue of these living forces that form our body, we have a near relationship to the forces of life and growth in
the plant kingdom, for a like principle is at work in the plant. In its own essence, invisible, supersensible, and
recognizable to the physical senses only by its effects, it is alive in the plant-seed and causes the plant to take
root and grow in harmony with the cosmic rhythms of the seasons. It urges on the development of the plant
toward a certain goal through flowering into a new seed-formation.
This supersensible etheric body of the plant calls forth from the material world a certain unfolding and
development in time and brings about a certain balance between the thriving, growing and the decaying, fading
process. Yet there is also an essential difference as compared to the human being. Wonderful as is the rhythm of
its development, the plant is never liberated from the perpetual cycle which begins with seed-formation and
leads again to seed-formation as before. The time-course of a human earthly life, on the other hand, is unique,
individual, and never to be repeated. This is because the human etheric body is constantly being influenced out
of the sphere of the soul—the so-called astral—and the I or Ego. These higher members—the astral body and
the Ego—are absent from the plant. Yet the plant presents a pure and beautiful picture of the working of the
etheric body, which establishes the bond between the cosmic rhythms and the inertness of earthly matter. The
etheric body brings cosmic life and movement into the rigidity of the earthly and mineral world.
Between the forces of the wider cosmos and those of the Earth, the etheric principle is the essential
mediator. But the same picture results when we return to our starting-point, the prenatal constellations. The
planetary realm, which is a picture of the etheric body, is intermediate between the cosmos of fixed stars
concentrated above all in the Zodiac, and the Earth as the place of birth.
One aspect of this has been shown to us in the example of Richard Wagner's prenatal horoscope. The
constellations of Cancer and Sagittarius or give inner spiritual content to the planetary conjunctions
which take place before them. It is like the course of a drama on the stage; the actors are the planets, the signs of
the Zodiac are like the scenery—the wings in time and space. The drama, however, also requires an audience;
its ethical effect shall be impressed upon the hearts of those who witness it. Where is this latter element to be
found in all the cosmic constellations? It is within the earthly sphere that we must look for it. The earthly realm
is the real counterpart to the world of the fixed stars. The ethereal realm of the planets mediates between the
two. Already in the prenatal period the physical development of the embryo is tending toward this earthly
realm, yet in its proper form as earthly space, the Earth-element only begins to be present at the moment of
birth. How then does it reveal itself? The birth takes place at a particular place upon the Earth and at a certain
hour of the day or night. This gives the earthly space a precise and definite relation to the starry heavens, for at
this moment a certain constellation is rising above the Eastern horizon, another constellation is setting in the
West, another again is passing across the meridian and so on. Thereby the planets, too, have a fixed relation to
the earthly space. If birth takes place in the morning, for example, the Sun will be rising in the East; if it takes
place in the evening the Sun will be in the West. The earthly space—its characteristic configuration by the
planes of the horizon and the meridian—will, therefore, be related to the cosmos in a different way in every
moment. This earthly space is the third element in regard to which we have to judge the prenatal constellations.
Though it is not yet actually there during the prenatal time but only from birth onward, nevertheless the whole
of the prenatal development is tending toward it.
The planes of the horizon and the meridian give us a natural division of the earthly space at the moment of
birth into four quadrants. Astrology, in course of time, has adopted a further division of these quadrants into
three sectors each, giving four times three, i.e. twelve parts of space, arranged about the North-South axis of the
earthly space like the sections of an orange. Into the space thus formed, the cosmos—above all the Zodiac—will
work in very different ways according to the hour of the day and the geographical latitude.
In the accompanying drawing we have tried to represent how the Zodiac and the planetary world rayed into
the earthly space at the time of Richard Wagner's birth, remembering that it is not easy to represent a three-
dimensional happening in two dimensions. Richard Wagner was born at sunrise, therefore we see the Sun upon
the line of the Eastern horizon (the astrological ascendant), but it is fairly far to the North-East. The Zodiac rises
through a fairly lengthy arc to the line of the meridian—represented by MC or medium coeli—and thence
descends in a comparatively short arc to the South-West. Corresponding relationships, only in reverse order,
will be found in the spatial hemisphere beneath the horizon.
In the inner circle we obtain something like the conventional picture of
a horoscope of birth. The Sun is in the ascendant, in other words is
rising. Venus and Mercury have already risen; Moon, Mars, and Saturn
are near the meridian; Jupiter is beneath the horizon. From the place of
birth (represented by O) the surrounding space is divided into twelve
parts (four quadrants of three sectors each, as described above) that can
be numbered 1 to 12—the well-known astrological Houses.
Familiar though they are in present-day astrology, people often find
the greatest difficulty in translating these diagrammatic horoscopes into a
real and true imagination of the cosmic facts at the moment of birth of a
human being. Yet this is what is needed. We may then supplement the
above picture by a more three-dimensional drawing which will help to create
an understanding.
The drawing is seen as though from a place outside the cosmos being the place of birth. From there we see
the horizontal plane with its directions: East, West, North, and South. The large vertical circle is the line of the
meridian, while the oblique circle cutting it at the point MC represents the Zodiac. The horizon-plane meets the
Zodiac in the ascendant and divides it into two portions, the visible portion shown in the fully drawn-out line
and the invisible represented by the dotted line beneath the horizon. The Sun is rising. The arc of the Zodiac
from the ascendant to MC is larger than from there to the descendant—the point where it sets in the South-
West. These and other circumstances are made clear by such a drawing.
The phenomena, therefore, are threefold: in the first place there is the Zodiac, secondly there are the planets
which arrive at their several places at the instant of birth from their prenatal wanderings, and thirdly there is the
earthly space, divided into four or twelve parts. In our second drawing it would have been too complicated to
represent the twelve, but we can recognize, at any rate, the four quadrants. The plane of the horizon divides the
space into an upper and a lower hemisphere; the plane of the meridian divides it into an Eastern and a Western
half. Thus there arise the quadrants I to IV, each of which divided into three parts once again would give us
twelve.
In the preceding article it was shown how the relations between the planets and the constellations of the
Zodiac may be read, even as a cosmic script. For example, Saturn's movement in Sagittarius, seen in
2
conjunction with Mercury, Venus, and Mars in their turn, was found to be full of significance for Wagner's life.
The question now will be, how is the cosmic writing further enriched by the inclusion of the earthly-spatial
aspect in the moment of birth?
These constellations took place with Saturn in a part of the Zodiac which at the moment of birth is raying
into the space of the 8th and 9th Houses, and from the opposite side into the 2nd and 3rd Houses too. This fact is
indicated in the outer circle in the first diagram. But to begin with we must try to gain some insight into the
meaning of these so-called Houses, specifying and dividing the Earth-space into twelve parts.
Whereas the planets are a picture of the etheric body and receive into themselves,
as it were, the intentions of the astral world of the fixed stars, the earthly space is
like the tablet into which these cosmic entries will be made. It is a picture of the
purely physical, namely the physical body of a human being. Just as a written
tablet tells of the work of a human being, so does the physical body of a human
being, with all its visible peculiarities, tell of the deeds done by the Gods by
means of the starry universe. The earthly space at birth will be a cosmic picture
of the physical body, for the twelve Houses represent the twelvefold nature of
the body as known to occultism. The twelve Houses, in effect, are the twelvefold
Zodiac turned inward into the earthly realm. The Zodiac rays down onto the Earth,
whereas the twelvefold earthly space opens receptively to the surrounding cosmos.
It is not without significance that in astrology the twelve Houses are traditionally indicated by the symbols
of the Zodiac. We must only remember that the Houses relate to the human body. Thus we can represent the
first house by the symbol the second house by , the third by and so on, until the twelfth house, which
would correspond to .
In this way we obtain the following relations of the twelve Houses to the physical human being:
1st House = This is related to the erectly carried head, emphasizing the vertical line in the
human being by contrast to the horizontal posture of the animal.
2nd House = This is a picture of the larynx and all that aspect of the body which is
connected with the forming of speech and sound.
3rd House = Gemini is connected with the symmetry of the human form, the two arms
especially; also the relative symmetry of the two halves of the face, the two lungs, etc.
4th House = The very symbol indicates the enclosing gesture of the thorax, ribs, etc.
5th House = This symbol too is a true picture, revealing Leo in relation to the circulatory
system, with its center in the heart.
6th House = Related to the internal parts of the body situated beneath the diaphragm.
th
7 House = This is connected with the region of the hips, the point of balance between the
upper and more inwardly directed [impulses], and on the other hand the lower [nature], by
which the organs of movement come more in contact with the outer world.
th
8 House = This has to do with the sphere of the reproductive organs.
9th House = Here we address ourselves to the region of the thighs, showing quite clearly the
outward tendency, the human being entering into relation to the environment of Earth.
10thHouse = This is related to the knees, but in a wider sense to all the joints, giving the
body its mechanics and mobility.
11thHouse = The region of the calves finds expression here; also the lower arms, giving the
power of harmonious and beautiful movement.
12thHouse = This is associated with the feet and hands, touching and working and treading
upon the things of the physical outer world.
In the example of Richard Wagner, the significant thing is that the prenatal conjunctions with Saturn took
place in a region of the cosmos where at birth the 8th and 9th Houses, or again from the other side the 2nd and 3rd
Houses, open out. The trilogy of the cosmic script appears then in this way: 1- Constellation of the Zodiac:
Sagittarius; 2- Saturn in successive conjunction with the other planets; 3- 8th and 9th (2nd and 3rd) Houses.
3
All the events that were pre-figured in the etheric body of Richard Wagner through the prenatal passage of
Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars before Saturn in Sagittarius, enter at last into the Houses; into the bodily
spheres of and . These prenatal happenings belong to the events in Richard Wagner's destiny of the years
1849, 1853, 1857, and 1876-7 (considered in some detail in former articles), whereby Richard Wagner rose
through all the storms and trials of his experiences to the eventual height of his historic greatness as an epoch-
making artist and composer of our time. The cosmic forces, predisposed in the etheric realm, are incarnated into
the spheres of the speech-organism and of the arms reaching out to action, that is to say into the sphere which
enables one to experience and to fashion word and sound. One has the impression that all this is first born in a
germinal way in the inner organs of the ear and larynx and thence flows into the poems, compositions, and
dramatic scenes achieved by Richard Wagner with his arms and hands.
All this had to be attained in an arduous and difficult path of life. It is indeed an impressive fact that not till
the age of 63 was Wagner able, in the Theater of Bayreuth, to set forth his art in a way that answered to his
ideal. We see herein the tendency of Sagittarius wherein we found the picture of a difficult and
arduous ascent. Saturn receives into itself this cosmic tendency and carries it into the formation of the ether-
body through all its encounters with the other planets in the time before birth.
All this was brought into the physical body in the way that has now been indicated, and the eternal
individuality of Richard Wagner took and made from it the wonderful achievement which he gave us by his
actual biography—the path of his earthly life.
4

Article by Willi Sucher, December 1937
THE GATEWAY OF THE MOON-1
What we have achieved in the course of these studies has, in fact, been none other than to penetrate into the
spiritual background of the ascendant of birth. For as we saw in working out the prenatal horoscope of Richard
Wagner, the ascendant at birth, or the descendant as the case may be, indicates the place at which the Moon
stood at the beginning of all those prenatal events in the cosmos which we have been considering.
We now must also be able to look at the whole matter from the other side in order to perceive what is
important spiritually. Shortly before birth the human soul undergoes the final phases of descent into the earthly
world. It clothes itself with the three bodies or vehicles. This is the essential fact of the passage through the
Moon-sphere immediately before the actual entry into the Earth-sphere. To begin with, there is the pure soul
and spirit of the human being, the essential ego having already clothed itself in a body of soul-forces, generally
called the astral body. Then at a definite moment the soul seeks connection with the physical germ provided by
the parents. Conception then takes place. About this time the human soul—being as yet only partly in
connection with the embryo—forms for itself an etheric body from the surrounding cosmic ether, as modern
supersensible research reveals. All these events are very much related to the Moon. The soul must wait until the
moment when the Moon is at a particular place in the Zodiac, answering to the inner requirements of the soul
itself. Only then can it enter upon its way into the Earth-sphere, gathering to itself the etheric body which it
needs. This moment coincides with the beginning of the prenatal constellation—in Richard Wagner's case 15
August, 1812. Thence there unfolds the whole course of the prenatal events among the stars, dominated by ten
Moon circles through the Zodiac. It is a cosmic archetypal picture of the etheric body which is now taking hold
of the physical embryo, forming it through and through, making it the bearer of a life-history that is to unfold in
time.
Again and again we must lay stress upon the fact that the point from which the Moon begins in this
progressive prenatal horoscope becomes the ascendant or descendant at the moment of birth. Take Wagner's
case once more. On 15 August, 1812 the Moon stood at the beginning of the constellation of Scorpio , about
one degree in the sign of Sagittarius . At the moment of birth this point is in the descendant—the place where
the Western horizon meets the Zodiac. The opposite point, the constellation of Taurus, is therefore in the
ascendant at birth. Now in astrology the highest importance is attributed to the ascendant. In estimating the
horoscope of a human being, ever so much is made to depend upon it. In doing so, a host of rules are applied;
rules that have grown more and more voluminous in course of time. Often one has recourse to the quite
external, empirical data, but then is no longer really able to see through into the underlying spiritual facts and of
the human being's connection with the cosmos. Little more is left than a sum in arithmetic which is more likely
to depress than to uplift one.
Above all, we must bear in mind that the essential home of astrology is in the East, and that it originated in a
period of time when an instinctive, dreamlike clairvoyance still existed which, within certain limits, is even still
to be met in the East. This dreamlike power of perception, in its prime, certainly needed no compendia of rules
to help it in unraveling the cosmic script when looking up into the starlit heavens. Mysteriously, to the humanity
of old, the stars made known their cosmic truths.
The gateway to this kind of knowledge is for the most part closed to Western humanity. We must go other
ways to penetrate into the spiritual world again. Wresting our way through all the discipline of scientific
thought, we must at long last make our way to the realities of the spiritual world that are behind the outward
facts and phenomena.
We have tried here to go at least a little step along this path. In so doing we have seen that behind the
ascendant or descendant at birth is where the Moon stood at the beginning of the prenatal horoscope, and that
thenceforward the very rich and manifold picture of the prenatal lunar cycles, which in their turn were a
reflection-in-advance of the whole stream of one's life and destiny in time, was unfolded. Thus the whole range
and conception of the ascendant of birth becomes filled with a qualitative reality, having its origin in the great
universe; a widely extended plastic picture of a person's spiritual affinities that we can now learn to consciously
understand. It is quite true that some of our descriptions were hardly more than a bare sketch or outline, but in
the further course it will be possible to supplement them, so to round off the picture and make it more real.
Now, just as we can penetrate to the spiritual essence of the ascendant of birth in this way, it will also be
possible with regard to the other components of the horoscope of birth. The position of the Moon in the heavens
at the moment of birth is a key, nay more, a gateway to the secrets of our very soul-nature. That this is so, was
already indicated in our first article, and it will now be explained in greater detail. Let us then call to mind once
more Richard Wagner's horoscope of birth.
The Moon is in the constellation of Capricorn, or in 15.5° of the sign of . To understand what the Moon
in this position signifies, we must in a certain sense go through the gateway of the Moon. We do so by
considering the relation of the lunar node to the Moon at birth. The lunar node, quite abstractly speaking, is the
point of intersection of the solar and the lunar orbits. There are, therefore, two nodes in opposite positions in the
heavens: an ascending node, generally represented by the sign, and a descending node, with the sign
The solar and the lunar orbits are not, in effect, in the same but in different planes, enclosing a certain angle.
Thus there arise the two opposite points of intersection.
The peculiarity of these two points of intersection is that they do not
stand still but slowly move. The plane of the lunar path rotates in
relation to the plane of the solar path; so the two nodes move
around. They move around the Zodiac in a contrary direction
to the rotation of the planets, i.e., from Aries backward
through Pisces, Aquarius, etc. A complete revolution
of a lunar node takes place in 18 years and 7
months; after this time, therefore, the node—the
ascending node, for example—is once again in the
same position in the Zodiac as it was before. The ascending node is, thereby, the mathematical point that (at any
given time and again after 18 years and 7 months) the lunar orbit rises above the solar orbit, while at the
opposite point the descending node sinks below it. We shall have more to say in the sequel concerning this fact,
behind which a very significant spiritual reality lies concealed.
In Richard Wagner's case, the Moon at birth stood at 15.5°
of the sign of . At the same time the descending node stood
at 14 degrees 12 minutes of the same sign of . Since the
node travels backward through the Zodiac, we see that it must
have been at 15.5° of (the position of the Moon at the time
of birth) shortly before birth, namely about the end of April,
1813. There was at this time a definite constellation in the
heavens of great importance for Richard Wagner. Venus came
into the constellation of Aries while Mars, approaching the
sphere of Capricorn, was at the same time in quadratic (square)
to Venus. In the above drawing, this constellation is recorded in
the outer circle. Mars and Venus were of especial significance for
Wagner's life—we can leave out the other planets for the moment.
The question now is: What can this constellation tell us about the human being? We have already indicated
that it has to do with the forming of our world-conception, our philosophy of life. In the spiritual symbols of the
Zodiac and of the planetary world, we have to look for their relation to the manifold philosophies that are
possible to humanity on Earth. Rudolf Steiner did this in his remarkable lecture-cycle, Human and Cosmic
Thought, wherein he discovered the following relations:
2
The twelve tendencies indicated here may be called the different kinds of philosophy or shades of
philosophic outlook. But there are also seven philosophic moods—qualities of feeling—connected with the
seven planets: Gnosis = Saturn, Logicism = Jupiter, Voluntarism = Mars, Empiricism = Sun, Mysticism =
Venus, Transcendentalism = Mercury, Occultism = Moon.
It is possible, for example, for a human being in an earthly life to
develop Spiritualism very strongly in the Gnostic mood. (Spiritualism,
needless to say, in the philosophic sense of the word, not in the sense of
modern Spiritism!) In cosmic terms we shall then say that Saturn for this
human being is in Capricorn. Such will then be this person’s spiritual
nativity, as against the nativity of ordinary astrology.
In Rudolf Steiner's descriptions it was not directly indicated, nor was
it recognizable to begin with, whether this constellation of the cosmic
philosophy had any relation at all to the actual horoscope of birth. All that
revealed itself at first sight was that the horoscopes of birth seemed in no way to indicate such a connection.
Moreover, Rudolf Steiner had expressly stated that this constellation of the cosmic philosophy might happen at
some time before birth or even after birth. It was only after long empirical investigations that the truth emerged,
namely that this spiritual nativity is connected not only with the actual events in the external cosmos but also
with the individual's horoscope of birth, connected in the way we have now indicated in the example of Richard
Wagner. This discovery, taken together with all the facts of the prenatal constellation, leads us at last to a
harmonious and total picture of the connections of the human being as a whole with the universe. In the
horoscope of birth we have the cosmic counterpart of one's entry into the physical world. In the prenatal
horoscope or prenatal constellation we have a cosmic picture of the etheric organization; the entire way in
which it takes hold of the physical and forms it. However, while in the constellation of the cosmic philosophy
we are given a picture of the astral, the psychological or psychic-bodily structure, which finds expression most
of all in the innate tendency and direction of one's philosophy. In this form of astrology we also have a way of
access to the threefold in its real supersensible essence, bodily nature of a human being: the physical, etheric,
and astral bodies as known to occultism.
When the lunar node (it may be the ascending or the descending node) is at the place in the Zodiac where
the Moon is at birth, this is precisely the moment when the philosophic constellation is present in the heavens. It
may be before or after birth, within a probable range of 18 years and 7 months. In Richard Wagner's case it was
very near to birth; only a month before birth the descending lunar node was at the place where the Moon itself
was at the moment of birth. Then the spiritual nativity of Richard Wagner was portrayed in the heavens. It
might well have been that we should have had to look for this spiritual nativity at the moment when the
ascending node went through the place where the Moon stood at birth. This would have been approximately
nine years and three months before or after the moment we have actually fixed on—the end of April 1813. We
see, therefore, that variations are possible—in this instance three—and that we must be well acquainted with a
person's psychology and spiritual character in order to choose rightly among the possible alternatives. Herein
there is indeed an element of liberation. This spiritual horoscope cannot be merely calculated; a quality of
freedom still prevails. The way is opened out into a kind of astrology in which it will no longer be possible to
look for the connections of people with the cosmos by dint of mere calculation; it will be necessary to develop a
sensitive inner feeling for the deeper character of the person concerned.
In Richard Wagner's case, in the constellation of the cosmic philosophy we have Venus in Aries and Mars
passing from Sagittarius to Capricorn. The philosophic tendency thus indicated would therefore be: Idealism in
the mood of Mysticism, Spiritualism in the mood of Voluntarism. (Experience with these constellations has
shown that for the philosophic moods the actual constellations rather than the signs of the ecliptic are
important.) The two aspects are not unrelated; they are in quadrant (square) to one another. In judging
horoscopes of birth, square is rather known as a hindering, disturbing factor, but in the processes we are dealing
with here the conditions are reversed. In the spiritual horoscope the bad aspects are good, while the good are
often hindering. This too was indicated by Rudolf Steiner and experience confirms it.
In a beautifully clear way, the above aspects are revealed in Wagner's spiritual creation in the whole
tendency of his world-conception. Already at an early stage he begins to take the mythological themes of Norse
3
and Germanic legend. There is a divination of this even in Tannhaeuser. With an astounding growth of inner
mystical experience he advances along this line. Often the dramatic poems are there for a long time beforehand;
only much later the music that belongs to them is added. So he advances—to indicate it only very briefly—
through the experience of the Siegfried myth in the Ring of the Nibelungs; through the death-in-love in Tristan
and Isolde, having its roots in the Celtic spiritual sphere; to the highest, the experience of salvation in Parsifal.
Experiencing in an inner, mystic way his own destiny of life, there arises in his soul the drama of the Flying
Dutchman, seeking his home and his salvation. In the Siegfried drama we have a picture of the battle of the
awakening “I” consciousness with threatening powers of darkness. In Parsifal we have the unfolding—dimly
felt as belonging to a more distant future—of the will-to-healing which lies hidden in the depths of his own
being. In mystic depths, Wagner discovers the formative and creative cosmic powers of the universe, even as
they are at work in his own destiny; the archetypal ideas reaching even down into the life of the individual. He
fashions them into his works of art. In his creations there lives the essence of Mysticism (intimately related as it
is to Mythology), colored by Idealism. So in the form of cosmic ideas he portrays the universal powers working
themselves out in personal and historic destinies.
Herein we also gain an access to the other aspect, the constellation of Mars in Capricorn—Voluntarism in
Spiritualism. It lay in the whole character of Wagner's soul and spirit and entered into all his work that he felt
the universal process as an entity of will, living and moving in a spiritual sphere and undergoing transmutation
in the realms of spiritual hierarchies. Though he also had difficulties to contend with, so that this picture of the
world grew to no more than a dominant feeling in his soul, still it was living in him and it represents the
fundamental mood of his artistic life-work.
It is, of course, very difficult when speaking of philosophic tendencies and world-conceptions in this regard
to formulate things easily and tersely. For the conception of Idealism or of Spiritualism, for example, must be
taken from pure philosophy, not from the many popular variations or conventional meanings. There is a very
great difference between what is commonly called Idealism in daily life and Idealism philosophically
understood. In the above mentioned lecture-cycle, Human and Cosmic Thought, these purely philosophic
concepts are worked out and represented, above all, in their sequence (their evolution one out of another)
following the dynamic course of the Zodiac. It is not possible to describe all this in detail here.
From the little that has been said about the constellation of the cosmic philosophy, it will already be
recognized what a tremendous significance this spiritual horoscope must have for us. For, in effect, it represents
the dominant soul-spiritual motives and motifs which in a high degree will govern our whole course and
character of life. Indeed in some respects it is even more important than the horoscope of birth.
4

Article by Willi Sucher, December 1937
THE RIDDLE OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
Deep riddles arise for us when we try to understand the life of Swedenborg. Here is an individuality who, up
to a certain point in his life, exhibited outstanding capacities in natural science and technics; the scientific world
is occupied even today with the outcome of some of his work. Then, to all appearances with absolute
suddenness, there came a great change over his soul. He became a theologian, he told of his experiences of a
super-sensible world and grew to be, for many people, the founder of a new religious outlook. For this reason it
will be interesting to try to gain an understanding of his life and character as mirrored in the constellations in the
heavens.
SWEDENBORG
Birth: 29 January, 1688- Julian Calendar (inner circle).
Beginning of the prenatal epoch: 20 April, 1687 (middle circle).
(Prenatal constellations indicated between the middle and inner circles.)
Constellation of cosmic philosophy: 27 September, 1687 (outermost circle).
Swedenborg was born in Stockholm on 29 January, 1688 (Julian calendar). At the University of Upsala he
studied Philosophy, Philology, Mathematics, and Natural Science, which shows what a versatile and universal
man he was. From journeys he made in England, Holland, France, and Germany in the years 1710-14, he
learned much about the world. In 1716 he became Assessor of the Royal Board of Mining in Stockholm and in
the following years accomplished a very great deal in technical and engineering matters. He achieved his well-
known feat of engineering during the siege of a Swedish town in the year 1718, when he transported a number
of ships across land for the distance of about fourteen English miles. It was especially in Natural Science,
however, that he was a shining light of his time, and even today societies of Swedish professors are editing the
prolific scientific writings which originated in this period of his life.
Then, about the year 1745, he brought out a work, De cultu et amore Del (On the Worship and Love of
God), which already indicated that he was departing from the purely scientific sphere. It is during this time that
one of his illuminations is referred. He saw with spiritual sight into a supersensible world. In a wealth of
theological writings he told of his supersensible experiences, and his followers founded something like a new
Christian church built on the Seer's writings and revelations.
Swedenborg died in London at the age of 82, after having completed his best and most comprehensive work
and having foretold the day of his death some weeks beforehand.
It is particularly interesting to see how this “break” in Swedenborg's life is mirrored in his prenatal
horoscope. It is in this horoscope, as we have seen, that the etheric organization is reflected, and these events of
Swedenborg's life must in some way be pictured in it. The year already mentioned as the year of Swedenborg's
illumination—1743—was the 55th year of his life; therefore, we must refer to the end of the 8th Moon-cycle,
reckoning from the beginning of the prenatal horoscope on 20 April, 1687, according to the Julian calendar (8 x
7 = 56). At this time an exact conjunction took place between Jupiter and Mercury in the constellation of
Sagittarius—1° and about 12° , Mars was in Aquarius ( ) and the Sun in Scorpio ( ), while Venus was
retrogressive in Libra ( ).
The position of Venus is particularly important, being retrogressive, and—as may be seen from the
diagram—the loop of retrogression was before the Sun in the constellation of Libra. It is with this fact that the
“break” in Swedenborg's life, culminating in the illumination of the year 1743, is especially connected. We are
led to the same conclusion when we regard the horoscope from a more physiological aspect. Here, where we
have to consider above all a cardinal situation in his life, the retrogression of Venus in Libra affords a highly
penetrative picture. It is as though the spiritual essence of Libra were to speak directly through the Venus
sphere; an element of decision is here at work. Something like the two scales of a balance seem to be living in
this picture in which Swedenborg's dual nature—even like a Janus head—comes to expression. On one side of
the scales there rests the cosmic destiny of Venus inasmuch as it has journeyed since the beginning of the pre-
natal epoch from the constellation of Taurus; on the other scale is Venus as it journeys on toward Sagittarius,
arriving there at the time of birth. Venus coming from Taurus gives us a picture of the rationalistic, scientific,
and practical man, while Venus passing into Sagittarius portrays the soul so strongly oriented toward religion,
the striving soul, rising to a knowledge of the Spirit. The fulcrum lies in the constellation of Libra, and here
indeed Venus passes through its zero-point, through a kind of nothingness, an empty void, into which the other
side of Swedenborg's own being—the Theosophist—enters with sudden power. For, in effect, the influence of
Venus being retrogressive is at this moment dampened and weakened.
There is another aspect of the question however. If we look at the horoscope of birth (inner circle of the
diagram), we notice at once the position of the Moon. It is in conjunction with Uranus and also near to the lunar
node and to Mars. Here there must be a key to certain secrets, and if we go back to the moment when the lunar
node was where the Moon is at birth, we find something most remarkable. As indicated in the article The
Gateway of the Moon, it is the so-called constellation of the cosmic philosophy which we encounter on going
back to this point of time. This constellation, from a certain point of view, gives us a picture of the astral body.
The date of it is 27 September, 1687. Thus it occurs for Swedenborg during the period of the prenatal
horoscope, about the end of the 6th prenatal lunar cycle. This, then, should be connected with the 42nd year of
his life. Admittedly, that is some time before the events described, which reached their climax in the 55th year,
but we may easily imagine that the change which was to come about was already being prepared in this 42nd
year in the depths of Swedenborg's soul.
Be that as it may, the constellation of cosmic philosophy which appears at this moment is most enlightening
(outer circle in the diagram). Mars is just passing from Capricorn to Aquarius and at the same time a
conjunction is taking place in Virgo between the Sun and Saturn. Voluntarism (Mars) is passing over from
Spiritualism into Pneumatism. This points to a spiritually minded philosophy of life which is able to look
toward an active world of spiritual hierarchies—a world of heavenly angelic beings. Connected with this
constellation is the conjunction of Sun and Saturn in Virgo. Here Phenomenalism is indicated in connection
with the Gnostic element of Saturn. Swedenborg's spiritual world-conception is nothing abstract or “in the air.”
It is founded on a real knowledge of supersensible phenomena, although here too, certain inner difficulties are
indicated in connection with the passing of the Sun before Saturn. Swedenborg recognizes the reality of the
2
supersensible, but has difficulty in breaking through to it owing to a certain peculiarity of his own being. This is
the secret indicated in the conjunction of Moon with Uranus at birth, which in itself points very decidedly
toward Occultism.
Looking still deeper, we find in the contrast between the Sun-Saturn conjunction and the position of Mars in
Capricorn-Aquarius a deeper reason for the apparent duality of Swedenborg's character. Between the two
constellations there is a trigonal (120°) aspect. In the spiritual horoscope the working of the aspects is reversed,
and so a trigonal aspect creates difficulties. In the Sun-Saturn position in Virgo we see the natural scientist
expressed (Gnosis in Phenomenalism), also the technical and mathematical empiricist (Sun—Empiricism),
while in the Mars position we have the Swedenborg of later years, turning toward the Spirit. Swedenborg was
not yet able outwardly to unite Natural Science and Spiritual Science. The “break” came in between these two.
Yet inwardly the two points of view supported one another all the same, for through his love of nature, filled as
it was with knowledge, Swedenborg planted the seed in his soul for those powers by which he was then
enabled, in the way peculiar to him, to perceive the many details of a spiritual world.
This article is intended only to give a certain part of Swedenborg's whole horoscope, namely that which
bears upon the peculiar dual aspect of his character.
3
This group of 15 Articles, published in 1937 - 1938,
in The Modern Mistic and Science Review, Bedford Row, Londen,
were written by Willi Sucher under the name of John Seeker.
They also appear in Willi’s Living Universe, available on this site.
1938
January, The Gateway of the moon(continued)

January, Napoleon’s horoscope of Birth
February, The Horoscope of Death
March, Darwin and Haeckle
April, The Zodiac
May, The Zodiac (continued)
June, Horoscopes of Birth and Death
July, Horoscope of Death and the life After Death
August, Thoughts on the Future of Astrology
Article by Willi Sucher, January 1938
THE GATEWAY OF THE MOON-2 (continued)
The constellation of a person's cosmic philosophy is not always as simple or lacking in complexity as might
appear from our first example, that of Richard Wagner. Often a human soul, owing to some one-sidedness of
character, cannot altogether master the philosophic constellation which, none the less, belongs to it. It then
becomes more difficult for us to read this cosmic horoscope. As an example of this kind we may consider
Nietzsche.
Friedrich Nietzsche was born on 15 October, 1844 at ten
o'clock in the morning. The constellation of the stars at the
moment of his birth is indicated within the inner circle.
The Moon is at 9° in the sign of Sagittarius. The lunar
node is very near, and indeed, shortly before birth it
passed exactly by this place of the Moon at birth. The
philosophic horoscope, as we showed for Richard
Wagner, may conceivably have been realized at this
moment soon before birth. Yet in the constellation at
this instant we find practically nothing that is in
harmony with Nietzsche's disposition. Then we must
look again throughout a wider range of time on either
side of birth for the congenial relations in the cosmos.
We find in May 1835 that the descending node had
been at the place in the Zodiac where the Moon stood at
birth, and this gives us another possibility.
In Nietzsche's case it is not very easy to make out what
the dominant note of his philosophy was. He underwent considerable changes
during the different phases of his life's work. We need a sensitive ear to apprehend how the different tendencies
of Nietzsche's spirit were able to change, one into the other. Now as it happens, Rudolf Steiner spoke of this
case in greater detail, and what he indicated based, as it is, on spiritual investigation as well as on his very close
acquaintance with Nietzsche's work, will be no little help in unraveling the cosmic aspects.
From about 1868 to 1875, Nietzsche was in close contact with Richard Wagner. Entering with enthusiasm
into Wagner's music, he sought the great composer's acquaintance and soon came to be on terms of friendship
with him. From the close sympathy between them there arose such works as The Birth of Tragedy Out of the
Spirit of Music, and Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. We may describe Nietzsche's philosophy during this period
as mystical in tendency; moreover, creative ideas are represented in this Mysticism as the driving power of
world-evolution. It is a mystical Idealism not unlike that of Wagner himself, described in our last installment.
The time came, however, when Nietzsche's link with Wagner was dissolved and broken. Very soon
Nietzsche's development carried him from this kind of philosophy into a very different tendency and outlook.
We come to the period of his life when he wrote Froehliche Wissenschaft (Human, All Too Human) and other
writings of this kind. Nietzsche “cooled down” and turned away from the mystical world-outlook of his
preceding phase. He became more of a scientist, intent on recognizing the logical, inexorable laws that prevail
throughout the world and upon realizing all that can be known by outward empirical research and experience.
Once again—about the year 1881 or 1882—a deep transformation came about in Nietzsche's outlook. He
now conceived his most famous work, Thus Spake Zarathustra. In wonderful poetic language he describes the
world he now experiences, all fired by the will to a higher, ethically more perfect humanity. In the world-picture
he unfolds at this time, the superman Zarathustra is indeed the goal of evolution, and the way thither is an awe-
inspiring battle, felt entirely as a thing of will between universal powers whose countenance lights forth in the
ever-changing scenes of history. Yet beautiful as the words are and full of poetry the pictures of his fancy, one
has the feeling that this universe of will with its titanic powers is without real spiritual background. Inasmuch as
the spiritual world is non-existent for him, for he can find no access to it from the time in which he lives, he
fails to show the real meaning of the cosmic process. His call and challenge so inspiring to youth, echoes and
dies away in the infertile prospect of a perpetual, materialistic “recurrence of the same”.
Then came the awful tragedy of Nietzsche's end. In 1888 he fell ill and suffered a complete breakdown. His
soul and spirit separated from the body, which went on for a long time vegetating without consciousness of the
surrounding world.
Thus we have three distinct periods of philosophic development in Nietzsche's life:

1. A period of Idealism in the mood of Mysticism—in close relation to Richard Wagner.
2. Thereafter a period of Empiricism, tinged with Rationalism.
3. Finally Voluntarism, upon a background of Dynamism.
We should now have to relate these facts to the cosmic data. In the starry heavens in May, 1835 when the
descending lunar node stood at the place where the Moon came to be at birth, we find, in effect:
1. Venus entering into Aries—Mysticism in Idealism.
2. The Sun entering into Taurus—Empiricism in Rationalism.
(Lastly, the rather strange and unexpected constellation)
3. Mars in Gemini—Voluntarism in Mathematism.
(See the figure above and the general indications given in our earlier article on The Gateway of the Moon.)
This third constellation does not seem to fit, yet looking deeply enough we shall find a very remarkable
connection. Here once again Rudolf Steiner helps us. Nietzsche should really have developed a philosophy
corresponding to Voluntarism in Mathematism—it would have been most wonderful. Imagine the world-aspect
of Thus Spake Zarathustra, translated into a mathematical world-outlook, a universe fired with will and yet with
mathematical beauty and precision! Nietzsche, as is recognizable from his whole character, didn’t have the
predisposition for Mathematism. His evolution still had to go via Empiricism (Sun) into Voluntarism (Mars),
and as this inner failing prevented his developing a mathematical philosophy, instead of passing on from Sun in
Taurus (Empiricism in Rationalism) to Mars in Gemini (Voluntarism in Mathematism), he sprang across into
the cosmic opposition to his former standpoint, into the constellation of Mars in Scorpio (Voluntarism in
Dynamism) and in opposition to the Sun in Taurus.
Now the fact is that in November, 1835 Mars entered Scorpio and at the same time, being in conjunction
with the lunar node, came into the immediate neighborhood of the situation of the Moon at birth. So in this
round-about way the constellation of Mars in Scorpio (Voluntarism in Dynamism) was after all made possible
for Nietzsche.
We are then faced with this remarkable fact: the purely spiritual researches of the seer are found confirmed
in the external realities of the cosmos. In effect, the mood of Voluntarism in Dynamism corresponds very nearly
to the last period in Nietzsche's philosophic life. But inasmuch as he could not find access to a real world of
spiritual beings, he had to suffer shipwreck with this philosophy of will. Such, then, was Nietzsche's fatality,
seen in the tragic ending of his life.
The philosophic horoscope is not by any means so simple as to enable us to read it abstractly or
automatically from any given cosmic phenomena. Often it is the difficulties, nay, discrepancies which are most
important in estimating a person's psychological and spiritual constitution. We must learn to look into the real
facts of one's soul as it reveals itself on Earth and, from the tension between these and the cosmic data,
understand all the struggles and conflicts of each individuality. Such is the lesson we may learn from the
aforesaid dissonance in Nietzsche's philosophic horoscope.
The question now would be, how can we penetrate from a more spiritual point of view into the
mathematical-astronomical data of the philosophic constellation so that it all becomes transparent to us? The
astronomical foundation is the fact already mentioned, that at the moment of this constellation in the heavens, it
may be either before or after birth, one or other of the lunar nodes is at the place in the Zodiac which the Moon
occupied, or will occupy, at birth. Here, in effect, we find realized another aspect of the Hermetic Rule referred
2
to in one of the earlier articles. We based the prenatal horoscope on the portion of this ancient rule which
declares: At the beginning of the prenatal constellation, the Moon is either at the ascendant or at the descendant
of the subsequent birth—at the ascendant if the Moon at birth is waxing, at the descendant if it is waning. But
the Hermetic Rule goes on to enunciate another fact, as follows: The place of the Moon in the Zodiac at the
moment of birth indicates the ascendant or descendant of the prenatal constellation—the ascendant if the Moon
at birth is waxing, the descendant if it is waning.
It will be seen that this latter aspect of the Rule speaks of the ascendant or descendant, not of birth itself but
of the prenatal constellation. In describing the prenatal constellation we were concerned in the first place with
the ascendant or descendant of birth. It is the place in the cosmos from which the Moon, at the beginning of the
prenatal constellation, took its start, returning time and again in the approximately ten prenatal lunar cycles.
This place becomes the direction of the ascendant or descendant at birth—East or West, as the case may be. In
this direction, determined by the geographical locality of birth, the Moon stood at the essential moment of the
prenatal epoch. This cosmic direction represents the path, the bridge, that leads over from the Moon-sphere into
the Earth-sphere. We find this fact confirmed inasmuch as this is at once a picture of the union of the etheric
and physical bodies, as was described in previous installments. In the ascendant or descendant of birth we have
a picture of the incorporation of the supersensible members of one's being, so far as the etheric body is
concerned.
In like manner we can think of the ascendant or descendant of the prenatal constellation mentioned in the
second part of the Hermetic Rule. It is a picture of the entry of the human soul from a sphere yet higher than the
lunar sphere; namely, from the Sun-sphere and the cosmic realms beyond. This aspect of astrology is filled with
spiritual meaning and thus made far more real.
The lunar node must somehow be related to this direction of the soul's entry from the Sun-sphere. This is
what gives the requisite conditions for the constellation of the cosmic philosophy. Moreover this relation also
must become spiritually clear and transparent.
The two lunar nodes are, mathematically speaking, the
points of intersection of the lunar and the solar paths which,
once again, are inclined at a certain angle to one another.
What happens now when these points of intersection
coincide with the cosmic way of entry of the soul from the
Sun and higher spheres? A diagram may help us here.
When the condition in the cosmos on which we based the
philosophic constellation is actually realized—when, in effect,
the points of intersection of the lunar and the solar orbits coincide
with the direction of the soul's entry from higher spheres (in
Nietzsche's case the direction of Scorpio)—we have, as it were, a wide-
open door. The cosmic space within the lunar orbit may be described as the
Moon-sphere; the space beyond the solar orbit as the Sun-sphere. Now the direction of the soul's entry from the
cosmos is individually determined, indicated as it is by the Moon at birth. When the Moon-sphere brings its
points of contact (the lunar nodes) with the Sun-sphere into this direction, a gateway is open through which the
human soul in question can pass in its own individual direction from the one sphere into the other. At this
moment the constellation is realized in the entire heavens, the importance of which has now been indicated—
the constellation, in effect, of one’s philosophy or dominant world-outlook.
Emerging as it does in this way from the actually given cosmic facts and phenomena, this picture voices
deep secrets concerning the spiritual path of the human soul before birth. Spiritual observation shows how the
human soul passes upon a long and gradually ascending way into a purely spiritual form of being after death.
We go on our way to the Gods and at long last entirely unit with Them. After a certain time the human soul
conceives the will to a new Earth-existence. Slowly we take our leave of the higher spheres so we come forth
from the lap of the Gods with whose help we have, over long periods of time, been preparing a new earthly
body, a new web and woof of destiny on Earth. Slowly the vision of the spiritual Beings fades away and there
remain only the memory-pictures of all that we have undergone, until at last when at the moment of birth the
Earth-sphere is entered into, the last vestige of consciousness of former existences is blotted out.
3
This way of the soul's descent—this ever growing inclination toward the weight of Earth—is made real to us
when we contemplate the philosophic constellation or philosophic horoscope. To begin with, there is the
tendency to enter from a certain cosmic region—the direction of the soul's entry—the ascendant of the prenatal
constellation, in the words, of the Hermetic Rule. If then for any individual human being we take this cosmic
picture in a really deeper way, bearing it with us as a spiritual exercise, it will give valuable insight. There is
also the other aspect, i.e., that at a certain moment the Sun- and the Moon-sphere are most intimately related to
one another (through the lunar nodes) precisely in the individual direction of the soul's cosmic entry. The
picture of a human soul's descent from higher spheres to Earth is, thereby, the more vividly painted. For in the
Sun-sphere the life of a soul is still of such a kind that it experiences in mighty revelations the spiritual reality of
the Gods. Then in the Moon-sphere a soul experiences a world wherein, in a manner of speaking, only the
reflection of the Gods' activity is revealed. It is the cosmic ether, as it were, the garment of the creative Gods.
The Moon-sphere has to do with the in-gathering and incorporation of the etheric organism above all, as was
described in our study of the prenatal constellations. In the time-organism or etheric body which is formed from
thence, there lives a spiritual texture, a woven garment, as it were, in which the Will of the Gods, regarding the
destiny or fate of this individual human being, lies concealed.
Thus in the meeting of the solar and the lunar spheres, we have a picture of the union of the etheric body
with the essential nature of the soul. In the soul-body of the human being—the psychology, impulses and
passions, sympathies and antipathies—divine and cosmic beings are indeed wrestling with one another. This
organism of the soul is the so-called astral body, and in it lives a hidden memory of what the human being
experienced among the Gods when in the Sun-sphere.
This then is the conclusion we are led to: in the constellation or horoscope of the cosmic philosophy, we
have a picture of the mutual relations between the etheric and the astral body. It brings to expression the
character and configuration of a person's philosophy of life, because the Thinking of the Gods about this human
being is in effect condensed here—drawn together into a more human thinking—nearer to the Earth. The Gods
in the great universe Think, for example, “Let there be Mysticism in Idealism, Empiricism in Rationalism,
Voluntarism in Mathematism.” And in this cosmic Thinking there lives a power of the Spirit, infinitely living
and creative. The soul of Friedrich Nietzsche takes hold of these cosmic Thoughts and informs with them the
hidden and mysterious depths of his bodily vehicle that is to be. Prenatal experience of the great strivings of
cosmic evolution among the Gods is thus transmuted in the human soul, deeply implanted into its earthly
destiny, to emerge in its life's unfoldment as the tendencies, the inner battles, and strivings of its philosophy.
Thus in a human being's philosophy and world-conception, Thoughts of the Gods are living, and if we
penetrate the cosmic writing of the horoscope in question, we get a picture of the Divine Thoughts that lie
hidden in the soul; memories deeply embedded in the one's physical and psychic organism, of one’s life and
passage through the Sun-sphere before birth.
An astrology guided by such points of view will penetrate to the spiritual reality that underlies the human
being as a whole, discovering at the same time in this human microcosm the reflection of Divine events and
spiritual forms of being.
4

Article by Willi Sucher, January 1938
NAPOLEON'S HOROSCOPE OF BIRTH
It is natural that the horoscope of the birth of a great historic figure like Napoleon I should have aroused
unusual interest. Arising like a meteor in the historic heavens and vanishing again into the darkness, humanly
speaking, Napoleon is an enigma. There is a horoscope of his birth familiar in astrological circles which we
have reproduced in the accompanying figure. The correctness of the data has been questioned, however, both
from an astrological and historic point of view. Even the day of his birth—not to mention the hour—is a matter
of some doubt. Astrological researches in the traditional manner, taking their start from this horoscope, are not,
therefore, of any certain value.
One aspect however—one that is not dependent on the
precise hour or day of birth—is of immense significance. It
is the planet Mars and, notably, its path across the
heavens during the prenatal period.
The beginning of the prenatal period takes us back
approximately to the beginning of November, 1768.
Mars at that time was just emerging from a retro-
gressive period at the beginning of the constellation of
Aries. In the immediate neighborhood, also in Aries,
is Uranus. Thereafter, in the three-quarters of a year
until the time of birth, Mars moves through Taurus,
Gemini, and Cancer into Leo. About the day of birth it
is in conjunction with Neptune. Moreover when in
Gemini—about the middle of the prenatal epoch—it
passes Saturn. This, therefore, is the aspect: Mars journeys
through the prenatal epoch from Aries to Leo, comes into conjunction
with Uranus at the beginning, and is conjoined with Neptune at the time of birth.
In Mars we recognize the martial, the aggressive, warlike quality which lived to such a high degree in this
human being. In all that Napoleon did and suffered, we might say, Mars was itself partaking in the life of Earth;
it was as though a Mars-being were living through an earthly destiny. That is what seems to find expression in
the cosmic picture, for the in-pouring of the cosmic world as represented by the horoscope must be taken in a
realistic way. But the Mars-being who works into this human body strikes a peculiar note. It reaches right across
from the influences of Uranus out of Aries to those of Neptune out of Leo.
Now the planets Uranus and Neptune (Pluto has been added to these in more recent times) are newcomers
among the seven planets known to the ancients. How is it then with these newly discovered planets? The
ancient seven represent something related more nearly and intimately to the human being and to the cosmic
environment which is still visible to us. Like the Greek Gods, extraordinarily near and akin to humanity, the
seven planets stand for forces working quite directly in the human being—the force of upright carriage, the
force of thought, of speech and so on. Through the development of modern science, the three planets Uranus,
Neptune, and Pluto have now been added to these seven other planets. They, in reality, reach out beyond the
cosmic environment which properly belongs to the human being. In them there is reflected a spiritual world
reaching beyond human consciousness; a spiritual world which eludes the one-sided physical and material point
of view and, to the modern scientific outlook, seems quite unattainable by humanity. It is the spiritual world
from which our genius derives its intuitions, yet also hostile and demonic powers work into our world from it.
It is from this world that the martial being of Napoleon receives such strong impressions. To begin with, at
the very beginning of the prenatal constellation, Uranus works strongly into Mars. Even the sign for Aries, ,
seems to express a strong incision of this kind. Super-human forces of the past are arising here. Then the Mars-
being who bears this experience within it, passes out of Aries into Taurus. Now since the times and phases of
the prenatal constellation reflect the rhythms of one's destiny in later life, this passage of Mars through Taurus
will be the picture of a certain period in Napoleon's biography. It represents, in fact, the time of his greatest
power when he was Emperor of half the Continent. Mars, tinged with Uranus in Aries, is in the mightily out-
raying constellation of the Bull which expresses, most of all, the overflowing tide of physical might and power.
In all this we may recognize a path of evolution of the planet Mars. It is like a living being intent on
reaching a certain goal by means of the man Napoleon. It is intent on wresting its way through to Leo. Leo, the
picture of the grand and courageous animal, yet also of the incalculable, universally feared beast of prey. Out of
this sphere the Mars-being would have brought about very remarkable achievements on the Earth;
achievements, however, which would not have served the normal spiritual evolution of humanity.
Mars wanted to unite with the Neptune-demon; Mars, in effect, was in conjunction with Neptune at the time
of birth. Neptune in Leo has to do especially with the attempts of humanity to form and re-form the social life,
yet it may also reflect the deterrent examples of misplaced and untimely efforts in this direction. Neptune's
coming into Leo at this moment represents a peculiar situation in human history.
The impulse which was seeking incarnation through Napoleon did not succeed in his time. Yet at a later time it
did, to some extent, strike through—though in quite a different form than it would have under Napoleon. I refer
to the Russian Revolution of October, 1917. This fact emerges from certain other astrological considerations.
Napoleon invaded Russia; he reached as far as Moscow, but the dread Russian winter destroyed his army. Then
came the sudden decline in his fortunes. In 1917 Lenin went to Russia, where he brought about the disastrous
Revolution. Neptune in Leo, with cosmic greatness, prevailed in both of these events.
In Napoleon's biography [prenatal-epoch], Mars never reached as far as Leo, though at his birth—the close
of the prenatal epoch—it stood there. It was with Mars in Taurus that he experienced the zenith of his power;
thence Mars went on into Gemini, passing by Saturn. This latter prenatal period is reflected in the last declining
years of the great human meteor and his painful end upon St. Helena. Here the Mars-demon was met by a
stronger one: Saturn or Chronos, the all-avenging and all-leveling God of Time. Saturn, in fact, is the cosmic
picture of human destiny, a portion of our mysterious higher self. As such, it also wields its power in the form
of natural events and catastrophes like the all-destroying Russian winter or the incurable disease.
In Napoleon's case, at the prenatal moment in question, Saturn and Mars stood in Gemini. It was as though
the Twins were measuring their strength: The Mars-demon—inspiring this human being with an ambition
incalculable and beyond all bounds—and Saturn in its beneficial aspect, weaving the threads of individual and
all-world destiny. Mars was defeated in the conflict. The demon seeking to work down through Mars was not
allowed to wield his final destructive power in the destinies of humanity, and yet it may have served and may
serve even now to awaken Western humanity from slumber; that as we ward it off, we may develop necessary
forces which hitherto were lying fallow and unused.
2

Article by Willi Sucher, February 1938
THE HOROSCOPE OF DEATH
Our study of the horoscope of birth and of the wider perspectives that are connected with it was brought to a
certain conclusion in the last articles. We now go on to deal with quite another aspect of our relation to the
world of stars. It is the horoscope—the constellation in the Heavens—at the moment of death.
The casting of a horoscope of death is something altogether new in astrology and might even seem, to begin
with, as an idle venture; for what is commonly expected of astrology is a prognosis, a forecasting of things
about to happen in the future. Only the horoscope of birth, occurring as it does at the beginning of one's earthly
life, would appear useful to this end, whereas the horoscope of death—that is of the end of life—obviously
cannot help us in forecasting the events of this life. Yet from this horoscope another and far greater prospect can
be unfolded. There opens out from it the perspective of the life and evolution of the soul in after-death
existence.
This is the positive value of the horoscope of death. The picture in the heavens at the moment of death is
like a focusing point wherein the entire earthly life that has been brought to a close is gathered up on the one
hand (even as in the fruit the inner essence of a plant lies concealed), while on the other hand this constellation
is like a picture of a new beginning; namely, the passage of the soul through cosmic spiritual worlds after death,
toward a future life on Earth.
Therefore, study of the horoscope of death has nothing to offer to those selfish motives which so frequently
inspire interest in horoscopes of birth. Yet it can lead us to perceive and recognize the spiritual fruits of an
earthly life that is now past. It gathers up, as in a great cosmic picture, all that one has made of oneself during an
earthly life and that will now work on decisively, forming one’s future. The horoscope of death is like a piece of
cosmic education for people on Earth. It shows how human work on Earth, being already of the past, appears in
its cosmic aspect—or as we might also put it, how it appears in the judgment of the Gods. It teaches us how we
might deal most fruitfully with our life's problems while on Earth. Thus, even for our reading of the horoscope
of birth, we shall do well to take very seriously the horoscope of death. This will emerge most clearly in the
sequel.
To begin with, we will develop in all detail the death constellations of historic personages. Most interesting,
for example, is the picture in the heavens at the time of Napoleon's death. We are told that he died in the
evening of 5 May, 1821 just as the Sun was setting in the sea.
In setting up a horoscope of death we have to deal with the same
mathematical and astronomical conditions which apply to a
horoscope of birth. Moreover, taking the cosmic picture as a
whole, we have to envisage three distinct elements here too:
first is the given fact of the earthly space, whereby one
aspect of the picture is precisely fixed; second are the
planets, with all their definite positions in relation to this
earthly aspect, either below the horizon or above it in the
Eastern or in the Western hemisphere of the heavens; third
is the relation of both the planets and of the earthly space to
the Zodiac.
The constellation of Napoleon's death presents a most
striking picture. The Sun, having just gone down, is in the
Western hemisphere. Close to the Sun is Venus. Still farther
down beneath the Western horizon there is a larger group of
planets in the constellation of Pisces, for there we see in close
conjunction Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury. The Moon is passing from Taurus to Gemini. Lastly, in
Sagittarius there is a conjunction—truly of world-historic significance—of the two more recently discovered
planets Uranus and Neptune. In this conjunction we see a cosmic event of historic import which is of rare
occurrence, if only because of the very slow apparent movement of these distant planets. The next conjunction
of Uranus and Neptune will not take place until the end of the present century.
This, then, is what is given to us, purely by the phenomena in the heavens. All the planets except Uranus
and Neptune are in the Western hemisphere, in the descendant, in their relation to the earthly space. Added to
this there is the peculiar congestion of planets in Aries and Pisces. To begin with, we have no more than these
phenomena to work with, for in sharp contrast to the astrology of birth there are no traditional experiences or
rules to help us.
To what, then, do the phenomena themselves relate? Let us first turn our attention to all that is determined
by the East-and-West relation of the earthly space to the cosmos. Beneath the horizon in the West we see a
regular barricade of planets. It gives the impression almost of a clenched fist. Herein we see a picture of
Napoleon's extraordinary character, appearing so like a comet to his day and generation, utterly unexpected,
incalculable in his effects. Clenched and congested power goes down beneath the Western horizon; it is like a
weary falling-back in the evening of a day which has brought many dire and difficult events.
As at birth, so too at death, these directions in space have a still deeper meaning. The ascendant of birth is a
picture of the human being's entry from the lunar into the earthly sphere. So too at death, the easterly direction
may be said to be a picture of one's departure into the lunar sphere, away from the Earth. In occult brotherhoods
to this day, when souls have gone through the Gate of Death, they speak of them as having gone “to the eternal
East”. The easterly direction shows the human being's future pathway into the life after death and vice-versa,
the westerly direction would indicate what is now past.
If this be so, then for Napoleon the direction of his entry into the Moon-sphere after death is toward Libra.
In the picture of the Balance we have an indication of his character as a man who is perpetually oscillating
between the powers of Light and those of Darkness, and who indeed cannot be understood at all as an ordinary
earthly man. Quite other conditions of balance or equilibrium are prevailing in him than in the normal human
soul on Earth.
Over against this, the past is indicated in the West, namely, what he is leaving behind him. Here then we
have the remarkable congestion of many planets. To sum it up in a single picture, we may perhaps see it as
follows: he goes out into the sign of the Balance, Libra, seeking the balance for his own being, for at his back
there is the heavy burden manifested in the Western heavens, the cosmic realization of all the dire and terrible
results of his path of violence across the stage of Western history, falling back as a heavy load of guilt upon his
shoulders.
It might seem, at first, as though this way of looking at the constellations of death were rather subjective.
Yet many years of work with this type of horoscope have revealed the presence of still deeper relationships
which at long last confirm what has been said. This confirmation is due, above all, to the cosmic script of
Saturn—the passage of Saturn through the Zodiac.
Let us consider once again the congestion of planets in Pisces in Napoleon's horoscope of death. This is
assuredly a most important feature. We shall find that about 30 years before, about 1791-4, Saturn occupied the
places in the Zodiac which at the moment of death are occupied by this whole group of planets. For Saturn takes
about 30 years to go around the Zodiac. Moreover, we shall find the following data: in the year 1796 Saturn was
in the place where the Moon is in the horoscope of death. Then about 1800 Saturn
was at the culminating point of the Zodiac, in the constellation of Leo; in 1805
it passed through Libra, the ascendant of the hour of death; and finally in
1812 it was in Sagittarius where Uranus and Neptune had their conjunction
in 1821. These are the transits of Saturn—transits in past time. It is the
opposite of what it is in the horoscope of birth, where we go forward in
time as we study the transits of Saturn or other planets through the
essential points of the horoscope. These past transits of Saturn—transits
referred to the moment of death—will lead to quite individual data for
every human life. We thus arrive at the following picture:
2
If we now compare Napoleon's biography with the panorama in time to which these past transits of Saturn
have led us, we shall discover that in Saturn's writing in the heavens the most important stations of his life are
indeed comprised. At the moment of death the planets find their way to all the places in the heavens where
Saturn stood at the outstanding events of the man's life.
A mighty picture of cosmic time is thus made manifest in the constellations of the moment of death. Like
the wide-open pages of a Meat Chronicle, the stars contain the life-story of the person who has just passed
through the Gate of Death.
Let us now regard Napoleon's horoscope of death from this point of view. In the drawing of the horoscope
above the past transits of Saturn and their sequence in time are indicated within the outermost circle. To begin
with we have the transits past the essential positions in Pisces and Aries, in the years 1791-4. It is the time of the
chaotic conditions of the French Revolution. The mighty social impulse which was the driving force in the
background of these events suffered a grievous setback, in the way that often happens. Out of the chaos a single
man worked his way up into a position of absolute power. It was Napoleon who rose from small beginnings and
in the year 1796—the time of Saturn's transit past the place of the Moon at death—was already in command of
the Italian campaign. The victory he achieved there was an important stage in his phenomenal ascent. Saturn
inscribes it upon the mighty cosmic background of Taurus. At the turn of the century, we have Saturn's passage
through the culminating point of the Zodiac—Leo, the picture of strength and power. Napoleon was now at the
height of his continental power from his enforced election as First Consul of the Republic in 1799, to his
coronation as Emperor and the crushing defeat of Prussia and Austria in 1804. After this, Saturn comes to
places in the heavens which are beneath the Eastern horizon in the horoscope of death; a decline sets in
beginning with the unhappy issue of the Russian campaign of 1812. This is connected with Saturn's transit past
the Uranus-Neptune conjunction in the horoscope of death. Powers of destiny enter in here and bring about the
downfall of this absolutist spirit who reached out over an entire continent with his thirst for power. In this
conjunction of Uranus and Neptune, profound spiritual relationships are revealed as to the meteor-like rise of
this strange being who, with all his destructive impetus, nevertheless brought many impulses involuntarily for
good into the evolution of the Western world, stinging and stirring into active life many dormant forces both in
individuals and nations—forces that had to be awakened at that time.
Finally we see Saturn return to its starting point in Pisces and, in connection with this, Napoleon's lingering
illness and death upon the lonely island. To repeat once more what was already indicated, the constellations in
the Western sky in this horoscope of death lead us again to the starting-point, the time of the French Revolution.
The impulse toward a better social life became transformed into its very opposite, into the dominion of sheer
violence. As Saturn returns again to Pisces—having gone once around the Zodiac—this man's life is
extinguished and on the painful bed of sickness there ends a path of destiny seeking to realize gigantic and
ambitious plans, yet strewn with countless instances of human woe and suffering. Think, for example, of the
great Army's retreat from the interior of Russia! These things fall back as heavy guilt upon the being of
Napoleon. This guilt stands greatly written in the position of the planets in the Western sky at the moment of his
death. For there we see the starting-point of his career of which we might imagine, that had he continued the
true spiritual impulses that underlay the French Revolution in its beginnings, he could have taken a less guilt-
laden path.
So the horoscope of death is revealed as a summing up of the earthly life that is now past. There stands
before us an awe-inspiring cosmic tableau, wherein the most important moments of the human being's life are
inscribed. But there is also another thing connected with this. Spiritual investigation tells—and people who have
returned to life after having been in imminent danger of death by drowning or in other ways, confirm—that in
the first period after death the human soul experiences a mighty memory-tableau of the past earthly life,
wherein all the important points of this life are contained as in a picture. This is none other than the human
ether-body, freed from its functions within the physical and now revealing itself in its true character as a body-
of-time—for so we had to call it in our studies of the prenatal horoscope. The ether-body now becomes a
tableau in time, containing all the memories of life. It is with this member of the human being that the
horoscope of death is most intimately related.
Moreover, it is Saturn who now paints this cosmic picture. Saturn, indeed, has to do most with the recording
of history; it is the cosmic chronicler, recording all that happens in the life of individuals and of humanity.
3
Saturn also recorded what happened in the fateful times of the French Revolution (1792-4), Napoleon's
emergence, and the unfolding of his life in the succeeding years. All this was silently and impartially recorded
by the planet Saturn in the great cosmic chronicle. Saturn would have made different entries and at different
places in the cosmos if this had been given by Napoleon's path of life on Earth. The primary thing is human
action, which—in the way we work and act—is decidedly within the sphere of moral freedom. Yet if we have
once made our decisions and conduct our life accordingly, then we have created for ourselves a destiny which
works into the future. So too will Saturn make its entries, working with might of destiny in such a way that the
person's death takes place when the planets are at the places in the Zodiac wherein the outstanding events of the
life have been recorded by Saturn. Thus, in the years of the French Revolution, Napoleon underwent certain
inner decisions which became important for the rest of his earthly life. Saturn recorded them in the constellation
of Pisces. This became so important for Napoleon's further destiny that his death had to ensue at a moment
when certain planets stood in Pisces, as indeed was the case in his horoscope of death.
Thus the earthly life of a human being is twice reflected in cosmic memory. On the one hand it appears in
the etheric body or body-of-formative forces. Memory, which is held fast there, is liberated in the moment of
death to become the great tableau-experience of the entire life. But in the great cosmos too, at this moment,
there is a memory-tableau of the past earthly life. It is a deeply significant connection. The cosmos waits for the
record of the earthly lives which we will bring to it. The cosmos waits for what will flow to it through human
ether-bodies—a spiritual memory pervaded by earthly facts and experiences. For the fact is that very soon after
death the human ether-body is dissolved entirely into the cosmos; therefore, the constellation of the stars at the
moment of death adapts itself to the tableau that is there in the ether-body of the dying person, and death takes
place at such a moment that the two are in harmony with one-another. The horoscope of death is, so to speak, a
negative, a mold, a hollow form, answering to the conditions in the individual's etheric body and well adapted to
receive them. For its further existence, the cosmos needs this etheric substance coming to it from humanity on
Earth. Our further study will reveal these spiritual facts in a yet fuller light.
4

Article by Willi Sucher, March 1938
DARWIN AND HAECKEL
Introduction by E. Kolisko
The editor of The Modern Mystic has asked me to write a few introductory words to the following article. Readers
will remember that in my series From Darwinism–Whither? I wrote these words:
“I must now introduce something that appears quite paradoxical and which may be believed or not as the reader feels
inclined, but which perhaps may be permitted in a journal which combines ‘Modern Mysticism’ and ‘Modern Natural
Science’...While Darwin is collecting his material (during his world-tour) for the Origin of Species, Haeckel is in his own
embryonic development making his prenatal experiences concerning the origin of his being.”
Now I think readers will have had rather a shock at this remark. And I must confess that I myself had not, at that time,
made any astrological confirmation of the above facts. But I wrote to Mr. John W. Seeker, who is writing the remarkable
series of articles on astrology in this journal, and asked him to make a comparison between the two horoscopes by means
of his new method of casting prenatal ones. The following article is the result. To my great satisfaction it confirms quite
literally the conjecture which I made only from observation of the coincidence of Darwin's world-tour with Haeckel's
embryonic period. Moreover it reveals even more striking connections between the planetary positions of both the
horoscopes.
The Editor has kindly agreed with my suggestion to celebrate this experiment in ‘modern mystical’ collaboration by
reproducing the photographs of the two great scientists in this number.” E. Kolisko
Darwin and Haeckel

The study of the birth-constellations of two such individuals as Darwin
and Haeckel, whose world-conceptions linked them so closely together,
seems to promise many interesting conclusions. This promise is
certainly fulfilled, for the two constellations reveal in a most beautiful
manner the interplay of the destiny of these two people.
It is true that the hour of birth is unknown for either of them, but
in spite of this we find most fruitful results when we call to our aid
the facts of the prenatal constellations. If from this point of view we
begin with the movements of Jupiter in the two horoscopes, we
observe remarkable things. In Darwin's case, Jupiter comes from the
constellation of Aquarius, makes its loop and then, toward the time of
birth, proceeds to enter the constellation of Pisces.
Darwin: Born February 12, 1809
Haeckel’s Jupiter, on the other hand, begins its movement in Pisces, goes
through its retrogression, and enters the constellation of Aries at the time of
birth. Pictorially speaking, we see in this simple fact something like a
“shaking hands” between the two personalities. The phase of Jupiter
in Fishes seems like a secret and pre-destined pact made between
the two, a constellation that is in every way timely and which has a
particularly strong connection with the natural-scientific theories
and struggles of our age. Still more profound connections are
revealed, however, by the respective Mars movements in the
prenatal constellations. Haeckel : Born February 6, 1834
Darwin's Mars moves from its approximate position in Aries-
Taurus to Libra and is in conjunction with Uranus and the lunar
node. During the fourth prenatal revolution of the Moon from the
approximate beginning of the prenatal constellations, Mars crosses the
cosmic ascendant, which signifies the direction taken by the human soul entering
into birth. This important direction is shown by the position of the Moon at birth.
As the Moon is waning on Darwin's birthday we must look to the opposite point of the Zodiac, in this case
to the region between the constellations Gemini and Cancer. This is where Mars is passing during the fourth
prenatal lunar month. As we know, every lunar month of the pregnancy period corresponds to seven years of the
actual life; therefore, this prenatal Mars event must be connected with Darwin's fourth seven-year period, which
is the time from his 21st till his 28th year.
This is precisely the time of Darwin’s great world-tour. He went to Brazil, through the Straits of Magellan,
to South America and the Pacific Islands. His book the Origin of Species and many of his other works all spring
from the material gathered during this tour. They became the foundation of Darwinism.
Mars works in the will of a person but is also connected with natural-scientific thought—in so far as it is
limited to material sense-observations and experiment. Mars in Cancer is the general direction of Darwin's
earthly destiny, indicated by the cosmic ascendant in Cancer and Mars wandering through this region.
What about Haeckel? He brought to a certain conclusion, as it were, what Darwin had begun. While
Darwin was traveling about the world, Haeckel was passing through his embryonic development and the early
days of his childhood. Is there anything in Haeckel which corresponds to the remarkable behavior of Mars in
Darwin's case? Yes, there is a dramatic counter-picture! The path of Mars during Haeckel's embryonic period
begins just on the significant point in between Gemini and Cancer and arrives at the region between Sagittarius
and Capricorn where the conjunction between Mars and Neptune takes place. Like a drastic gesture it appears as
though Haeckel seizes hold of that which Darwin brings back from his world travels. In this moment his destiny
is stamped into his etheric prenatal organization.
But there is another connection with Saturn. Darwin’s Saturn moves during his embryonic period from the
constellation of Libra toward conjunction with Neptune in Scorpio. Haeckel's Saturn is passing through the
constellation of Virgo.
2
The way in which Darwin's Saturn stands in Scorpio expresses what Darwin called the “struggle for
existence”. Saturn, in Scorpio, means evolution through death.
Haeckel experienced and formed his life in quite another sphere—Virgo. He felt the idea of development as
a penetration into the secrets of the evolution of life, and its metamorphoses.
In the fifth prenatal lunar month of Haeckel's embryonic period, there is a remarkable conjunction of Sun,
Mars, and Saturn in Virgo—the Sun arriving a little earlier than Mars. This corresponds to the time between the
28th and 35th years of Haeckel's life. It was in his 29th year (1863) that Haeckel first stood up for Darwin's
teaching. In 1866 he published his General Morphology wherein he aimed at establishing a scientific system
from Darwin's theories.
If we follow the further movements of Saturn during Haeckel's life-time, we find in 1863 how Saturn
returns exactly to the place where it stood at the time of Haeckel's birth. In 1866 when the General Morphology
was published, his Saturn is in Libra where Darwin's Saturn began, and in 1899, when Haeckel edited the
Riddle of the Universe, which he himself considered to be the completion of what he had begun 33 years before,
Saturn is standing in the constellation of Scorpio; that is, exactly where Darwin's Saturn had stood at his birth.
Thus, also from the aspect of Saturn the circle between these two personalities is closed.
These things show that historical events are not only mere earthly happenings, but also facts in cosmic
etheric space. To look at this other space in which cosmic reality rules, awakens a feeling for the value and
responsibility of human life.
3

Article by Willi Sucher, April 1938
THE ZODIAC
In the present phase of human evolution the old traditional wisdom of the stars is fading away ever more
and more, and we are bound to look for new ways of knowledge of our relation to the stars. The study of the
constellations of death can be a very great help in this direction. One might almost say that the dead, who for a
long time remain connected with the constellation in the heavens at the moment of their death, are the true
astrologers of our time. If the living find their right relation to the dead, they will gain new and fruitful
knowledge of the cosmic relations also.
This aspect shall be developed further in the present essay. Above all, we wish to gain renewed insight into
the nature of the Zodiac and its twelvefold differentiation. We must somehow reach a wider vantage point;
therefore, we shall consider quite a number of historic characters, and how in their horoscope of death they
came into relation to the universe of stars. No single horoscope can embrace the full, twelve-fold character of
the Zodiac. Napoleon’s horoscope of death emphasizes, in the main, only a single constellation, that of Pisces.
For this reason we shall have to study several horoscopes, bearing in mind especially how the upper planets—
those beyond the Sun: Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—are related to the constellations of the fixed stars.
We will begin by going far back in Western history to the time of the Middle Ages and the era of high
Scholasticism. St. Thomas Aquinas, undoubtedly the greatest figure in the Scholastic movement, died on 6
March, 1274. The constellation of the stars on this day will give us a picture of the relation of his work on Earth
to the starry heavens. It is a most impressive picture. The Sun is in Pisces, and half-way between Jupiter is in
Aquarius and Mars is in Aries. Jupiter is side by side with Venus, and the Moon also is in that region, while on
the other hand Mercury is near to Mars. It is like a painting in the cosmos, harmonious in composition, balanced
and centered in the forces of the Sun. Yet the Sun in this picture also has another aspect, Saturn is in Virgo and
in opposition to it.
Fig. 1: St. Thomas Aquinas - Horoscope of Death - 6 March, 1274
This gives the horoscope a peculiarly twofold aspect, and we shall find that this duality pervades the entire
work of St. Thomas in his life on Earth. On the one hand he represents the Scholastic stream in its finest
essence. Seeking to apprehend the inmost essence of this important epoch in our spiritual history, we may have
recourse to a historic picture created by this very era, the architecture of the Gothic cathedral reaching its
highest perfection in that of Chartres. In the strong emphasis on the vertical line, with its heavenward aspiration,
the spiritual mood of the people of that time finds characteristic expression. By fine and subtle thought,
disciplined in an unmeasured devotion to the spirit and developing an elaborate technique in the forming of pure
concepts, people of that time sought and found contact—often it was a very real and near contact—with the
divine and spiritual. Even as the upward-striving spires of their cathedrals reached out into the infinite of the
universe, so in the upward orientation of their own being, in pure thought they still had a delicate thread uniting
them in a very direct way with the divine-spiritual world. For as they raised their thought in receptivity to the
spiritual world, they felt the divine revelations lighting up in them. The purest and most powerful exponent of
this attitude of soul, Thomas Aquinas, appears upon the scene of history. Doctor Angelicus was the name given
to him by the people of his time. He, most of all, was imbued with this virginal being of the soul, able to open
out in an unparalleled degree in pure thought to the divine. So he became one of the greatest spiritual figures of
his age. His extant works, the so-called Summae, bear witness to his greatness.
This character of soul, subtly developed, highly trained, yet still directly open to the spiritual, is well
expressed in the position of Saturn in Virgo at the time when he passed through the gate of death. Saturn, the
highest of the seven planets, is in the virginal constellation. Into this constellation there goes forth that aspect of
the being of St. Thomas wherein he was so well able to receive into his soul the spiritual revelations. This
becomes still more evident when we pay attention to the past transits of Saturn. For we then recognize what
period of his life it is which, as it were, goes out into this constellation. It is about the year 1244-5. A year
before, Aquinas had been received into the Dominican order. In 1245 he was called to Paris to the school of
Albertus Magnus. Saturn in Virgo in the horoscope of death is thus a picture of his rise, of the essential step he
took which led him out into the spiritual horizon of his age. Virgo stands out in the horoscopes of other
representatives of the time. Albertus Magnus, teacher and friend of St. Thomas, had Jupiter in Virgo at the
moment of his death (15 November 1280), at the same place where Saturn stood at the passing of St. Thomas.
At the death of Duns Scotus—Doctor Subtilis, as he was called—Mars was in Virgo (8 November, 1308).
A very different world from this one, so tenderly, so intimately devoted to the experience of the Divine and
spiritual, is that inscribed into the constellations of Aquarius, Pisces, and Aries in St. Thomas' horoscope of
death. In point of time—that is to say, as regards the transits of Saturn—it represents the period in Aquinas' life
when he was already a far-famed personality at the University of Paris and throughout Western Christendom.
Yet we must look a little deeper. It was the time when he was struggling with spiritual tendencies which he
considered detrimental to the true evolution of humanity. These tendencies were concentrated, above all, in the
ideas of the Moorish philosopher Averrhoes. The conflict, once again, was in the sphere of life wherein the
people of that time had to wrestle with the great spiritual truths—the element of thought. As an essential
starting-point for the discipline of thought they took the Aristotelian philosophy. Thus on the surface it appears
as though the bone of contention had been the true interpretation of the extant writings of Aristotle. Yet behind
this a far greater struggle lay concealed. The spiritual reality and substance of one's eternal being was the point
at issue.
Aristotle had lived and worked in the 4th century before the Christian era, yet his philosophy remained a
vital thing even into the Middle Ages. To begin with, his works had been transmitted by the Greek schools of
the philosophers. In the early centuries of Christianity, when these old schools of wisdom were sorely pressed
and persecuted, even annihilated, the works of Aristotle found their way into the civilizations of Syria,
Mesopotamia, and Western Asia. Translated into Oriental languages, they suffered numerous distortions. One
such translation came into the hands of the Moorish philosopher Averrhoes. True to the character of the Arabic
soul, Averrhoes gave his own commentary of the philosophy of Aristotle. From his description, one might
easily conclude that in the view of the Greek master a person does not bear within itself an immortal, spiritual
core of being; only a spark of the divine is kindled within that merges after death without continued personal
existence into the ocean of divine being. Thomas Aquinas had to refute this interpretation, for it lay not along
the line of normal spiritual development of the Western world. Against the Latin Averrhoists, he caused a fresh
translation of certain portions of Aristotle's works to be made from the original Greek and wrote voluminous
commentaries. This was the time when he was working as Magister at the University of Paris and, notably, the
time of his sojourn at the court of Pope Urban IV, 1261-4. It is this period which is inscribed by the transits of
Saturn into the constellations of Aquarius, Pisces, and Aries. The height of his activity was recorded, above all,
in the Sun in Pisces; namely, the time when he went from Paris to the Papal court—in some sense the
acknowledged spiritual leader of Western humanity.
2
Thus in his horoscope of death two tendencies reveal themselves, concentrated respectively in the
constellations of Pisces and Virgo. To Virgo belongs the quiet inner bearing of the soul, hearkening to the voice
of knowledge of the divine secrets of creation of the world and humanity; knowledge that will arise in deeper
regions of the soul if we are serene enough to hear it. Likewise the constellation of Virgo is associated with
one's entry into the inner, spiritual life of nature. Pisces, the opposite of Virgo, is associated with the great
spiritual battles of humanity. We see it in St. Thomas' horoscope of death in another way then we did in
Napoleon's. Yet we shall also recognize the tremendous difference of the two horoscopes. Great as the battles of
Scholasticism were, Thomas Aquinas by his life and work inscribed them in the cosmic sphere of Pisces with
serene harmony. This cosmic region in his horoscope of death is like a picture wherein the past and the future of
the world are most harmoniously united; the planets by their several positions leading from Aries, through the
Sun in Pisces, into Aquarius. In Napoleon's horoscope, on the other hand, we found Pisces blocked by the
conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and Mercury. Here too we had to do with one of the great battles of
humanity. Beginning in the French Revolution, like a clenched fist it thrust its way into the Western world.
Seen in a cosmic light, as in these horoscopes of death, the events of Napoleon's time appear more tangled and
convulsive, by no means harmoniously resolved as in the lifework of St. Thomas, where Pisces is irradiated by
the Sun. It is the Sun, this time, which gives its character to the constellation of Pisces, filled as it is with the
prototypes of spiritual battles.
There is a picture of St. Thomas Aquinas by Gozzoli, most illustrative of this fact. From his heart a Sun is
raying out, beneath his feet crouches Averrhoes whom he has conquered, while from the heights above him
Christ is speaking: Bene scripsisti de me, Thomma! It is a most impressive fact that in Averrhoes' own
horoscope of death (12 December, 1198) the planet Mars is at the very place where the Sun is in that of
Aquinas; namely, once more in Pisces. The Sun of the heart in St. Thomas over-rays the Mars-like impulse of
Averrhoes.
The age when these developments took place was a great turning-point in the spiritual life of the West. Seen
in a cosmic light, it took place along the line from Virgo to Pisces. The Virgo forces, the impulses toward a
deepened inner life of soul belonging to the cosmic sphere of the Virgin, were battling for their existence with
those other forces which were taking shape in Pisces. Pisces itself became transformed while the virginal world
of pure thought also underwent an essential change. Scholasticism was still able, in stern discipline of thought,
to rise to the divine and spiritual—the secrets of Divine Revelation. Yet at this turning-point in human evolution
the faculty was slowly vanishing. A tragic event of the time reveals it—I refer to the destruction of the Order of
Knights Templars, during the seven years from 1307 to 1314.
Founded with the avowed object of protecting the sacred places of Christianity in Palestine against the
Mohammedans who ruled in the Holy Land, the Order of Knights Templars had yet a deeper meaning. It
labored to preserve deep spiritual secrets cultivated long ago in the ancient Mystery-centers of the East and
shedding light upon the spiritual evolution of the world and of humanity. The esoteric task of the Order was to
carry over the old Oriental Wisdom-treasures and unite them with all that which had arisen in the West out of
the Christian stream. So in the depths of its mysteries the order bore within it mighty treasures of wisdom—the
gold of wisdom of the spiritual Sun. To some extent it was a misunderstanding on the part of the outer world,
imagining the secret treasure of the Order to consist in fabulous amounts of material gold, which led to its
eventual destruction.
Philip the Fair of France was the protagonist. Greedy and jealous of the Templars' gold, he wanted to
destroy them. In 1307 he ordered the arrest of the leading Templars in France. About this time, Saturn was in
the constellation of Libra, Jupiter was coming into Scorpio, and Mars was in Sagittarius. Yet this event was but
a prelude to the seven years of dire conflict which now ensued. Awful reproaches of unchristian life were
leveled against the Templars. False confessions were wrung from them by torture. There followed blow on
blow. In the year 1310, fifty-four of the Knights Templars were burned alive. Then at the last the Master of the
Order, Jacques de Molay, died at the stake. This was on 11 March, 1314. The destruction of the Order was now
complete.
3
Fig. 2: In the Inner Circle: Beginning of the Trial of the Knights Templars with their arrest on I4 September, 1307.
In the Middle Circle: 54 of the Knights Templars burned at the stake 24 May, 1310.
In the Outer Circle: Jacques de Molay burned at the stake 11 March, 1314.
Strange were the constellations at these points of time. In 1310, at the destruction of the fifty-four Templars,
Saturn was entering the constellation of Sagittarius, Jupiter was in Pisces, and Mars in Gemini. Then at the
death of Jacques de Molay, Saturn was passing from Sagittarius to Capricorn, while Jupiter and Mars were in
conjunction in Gemini. Herein we see a certain line, clearly marked out in the cosmos. At the beginning, in
1307, Saturn is in Libra, having but recently emerged from the direction of Virgo and Pisces with which the
spiritual conflicts of Scholasticism were associated. Then at the time of the final annihilation of the Order—
between the death of the fifty-four Knights and the martyrdom of the last Great Master of the Order—Saturn
was passing through Sagittarius. Yet at the same time, very strongly in these two historic moments, the
constellation of Gemini is bespoken, as our drawing shows (Figure 2). Thus the direction in the cosmos from
Sagittarius to Gemini is most especially connected with the destruction of the Templars Order, and yet the
former direction also—Virgo to Pisces—plays a certain part.
It is like a cosmic cross into which the spiritual events of this epoch are inscribed. Scholasticism was
wrestling in the Spirit, striving to find connection with the Divine Revelation by purity of thought. Yet in the
sequel, precisely this connection was destined to be lost. All this took place along the line from Virgo to Pisces.
Meanwhile the Order of Knights Templars sought to establish continuity with the wisdom-treasures of the
ancient Mysteries. The Order was destroyed; its annihilation is associated with the cosmic line from Sagittarius
to Gemini. Herein is manifesting the turning point of cosmic time wherein humanity became involved in the
13th century. Slowly at first and then ever more quickly in the succeeding centuries a new mode of thought
arose, directed rather to the outer world of the senses. The deeper spiritual streams now took their course more
in the hidden background of external history.
One man experienced this spiritual turning-point of history in a quite intimate and human way. This was the
German mystic, Meister Eckhardt. Brought up in the Scholastic discipline of thought, he was already one of
those whom the old faculty eluded, i.e., to find connection with the divine-spiritual by dint of thought alone. He
now could only find it beneath the region of full consciousness, in mystical experience in the purified life of
feeling. Out of this mood of soul he came to such a thought as this one: “Whatsoever man is able to think
concerning God, it is not God. What God is in Himself no man can attain to, save that he be transported into
that very Light which is God Himself.” This kind of spiritual experience was altogether new in that time; so
then it came to pass that the Church would not tolerate it. They only wanted to preserve the Scholastic method.
In a trial for heresy, Meister Eckhardt's views were condemned. He himself died during the trial in the year
1327.
It is remarkable that in his horoscope of death (Figure 3; the exact date is not known) the Sagittarius-Gemini
direction is again brought out, for Saturn in that year was in Gemini, Mars was in Taurus, and Jupiter in Cancer.
It is the cosmic counterpart of what was there at the time of the destruction of the Knights Templars. This time
we see the same direction from the other side, from the sphere of Gemini.
4
We thus gain a more complete picture of the cosmic cross: Virgo and Pisces, Sagittarius and Gemini. Above
all, in this way the essential nature of the Zodiac becomes for us more real and more substantial, both humanly
and spiritually. We are enabled to experience it as something near to our humanity, not only in the sphere of
unapproachable, inexorable powers of fate.
Fig. 3 Horoscope of Death - Meister Eckhardt, 1327
Thus it belongs more to the constellation of Virgo, how one may seek and find by inner paths of the soul the
spiritual being of nature and of human life. In Pisces we have the counterpart of this, the cosmic picture of great
spiritual battles in human philosophy and world-outlook. Sagittarius is connected more with humanity's
wrestling for its own human development: the periodic rise and fall of different streams in history; the struggle
of the higher spiritual human with the lower, more animal and instinctive life. The influence of Gemini in one's
experience of destiny has to do most of all with one’s dual nature: buoyant and tending to fly away from the
Earth upon the one hand, and on the other hand tending to be dark and earthy, rigid and uninspired.
5

Article by Willi Sucher, May 1938
THE ZODIAC (continued)
In last month's article we tried to show how a moment of deep import in the spiritual evolution of
humanity—the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries—was inscribed in the writing of the stars. In a great cosmic
cross this epoch is recorded in the starry heavens. On the one hand there was the last withdrawal into the dark
hidden background of external history of the ancient wisdom, shown in the tragic drama of the destruction of
the Knights Templars and recorded in the constellation of Sagittarius, and on the other hand there was the
flower of medieval Scholasticism, related to the constellations of Virgo and Pisces. Finally, there was the rise of
Mysticism in the figure of Meister Eckhardt, whose destiny is inscribed in Gemini.
This cosmic cross—Sagittarius and Gemini, Virgo and Pisces—represents in its world-historic aspect a
decisive moment in the spiritual evolution of humanity as a whole. Forces of consciousness from times of old
are dying out, and a new beginning dawns on the horizon. It is indeed significant how the evolution of the
Western world from this moment onward until the present day appears revealed in the light of cosmic
happenings. With a remarkable continuity, this evolution of humanity from the Middle Ages onward is
represented in the cosmos.
Let us then take our start from Aries this time. We shall see how the leading figures in spiritual evolution
came into relation with the Zodiac through their horoscopes of death. To begin with, there is St. Bernard of
Clairvaux, who died 20 August, 1153. Mars was in the constellation of Aries. What signifies this place of Mars?
The past transits of Saturn, explained in a previous installment, will enable us to find an answer. It is the
foundation and growth of the monastery of Clairvaux in which St. Bernard played a decisive part and which is
recorded here by the planet Mars. In Aries an event stands written proceeding from a most important impulse;
born of the fiery mystical experience of a man who was also the inspirer of the second Crusade. There dawns in
these events the path to which medieval humanity was destined, from the last relics of ancient Mystery-wisdom
to the type of mystical experience which comes to full expression in Meister Eckhardt.
This new incision in the spiritual strivings of humanity approached the human beings of the Middle Ages
time and again and from many aspects. Passing on now into the sphere of Taurus, we find Raymond Lulli, at
whose death—29 June, 1315—Mars stood in this constellation. He was the well-known originator of the
"Lullian art", as it was sometimes called, trying to reach by subtle combination of philosophic concepts already
known to humanity, new kinds of questions and new answers. His way of thinking influenced many others,
even in much later times—Giordano Bruno for example. Raymond Lulli was born in Mallorca. In his youth he
lived a life entirely given up to the impressions of the senses. Then, of a sudden, he had a visionary experience
which made him change the direction of his life. Thenceforth he devoted himself exclusively and whole-
heartedly to spiritual study and to the great religious questions of his time. This was the decisive event in his life
which was inscribed by Mars in Taurus.
In Aries we saw reflected a human event arising out of a deep inner impulse, an all-absorbing mission. In
Taurus we have the picture of a conversion, a transformation due to a deep experience in spirit. A powerful
incision gives a quite new turn to an existing tendency of life. This quality of Taurus will also be found in other
horoscopes of death.
Now we trace human history in its cosmic aspect further on into the sphere of Gemini, where a deep cleft
arises between the inner and the outer world. We had already encountered this kind of soul's experience in
Meister Eckhardt. The mystic with his deeply inward orientation of life comes into conflict with the Church.
Gemini, the twin brothers wrestling with one another in every human soul, is revealed here; typified in the
striving of the individual within itself toward the inner light and, in the mighty institution of the Church,
desiring to adhere to past tradition.
Yet evolution took its course in such a way that the old faculties of knowledge gradually died into the
characteristic mystical experience of the Middle Ages. Scholasticism in its best exponents still maintained a
balance by deep discipline of thought. In thought, the conscious inner life of a human being sought to retain
connection with the higher world of Divine Revelation. This faculty became extinguished by and by.
Significantly, we see this happening in such a man as Nicholas of Cusa, who died 11 August, 1464. Born at
the turn of the 14th to 15th centuries, he grew up in the Scholastic discipline of thought; but his inner experience,
led him along another path. While voyaging across the sea, a mystical experience came to him as if being
bathed in the eternal ocean of the spirit, yet in such a way that the experience no longer penetrated up into the
realm of thought. A “knowing ignorance” is his own name for this experience of the divine; so he describes it in
his book, De docta ignorantia. Now at this death there is a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation
of Aquarius. Herein we see his connection with Scholasticism. Yet on the other side Mars and Venus are in the
region of Cancer and Leo. This is the cosmic picture of his own more inward path into the sphere of docta
ignorantia. Between the two constellations, his experience on the sea-voyage is recorded in Aries.
Thus we see indicated in the constellation of Cancer a tendency in human spiritual development to withdraw
into the inner life of the soul. This is expressed still more strongly in the horoscopes in Leo. Therefore, in the
horoscopes of death of quite a number of mystics of the later Middle Ages and of the dawn of modern time, we
find the planets entering the realm of Leo. One who stands out among them all is Johannes Tauler, a disciple of
Meister Eckhardt. At his death on 16 June, 1361, Saturn, Mars, and Venus were in Leo. A unique experience of
Tauler's life was recorded into this constellation. We refer to his so-called conversion by the Friend of God
from the Oberland, a man whose influence extended far and wide in the neighborhood of Basle at that time. The
Friend of God is indeed a mysterious figure in the history of the time. There is no actual historic evidence of
who he was or where he came from, only the stories told in the circle of those amongst whom he moved refer to
him as a wonderful being who had a deep and far-reaching spiritual influence. So too the story of Tauler's
"conversion". In his encounter with the Friend of God he underwent deep inner experiences, and his own
influence and eloquence as a preacher was wondrously enhanced.
While in this way the constellation of Leo is connected with the quest of spiritual truth in deep recesses of
the human soul, Virgo belongs to the inner peace, the quiet poise of the soul within the spiritual being of nature
and of human life. This was already pointed out in relation to Scholasticism in the previous article. Unknown to
the outer world, in inner silence and serenity of soul, experiences take shape in the sphere of Virgo, preparing to
bring about essential changes in the development of consciousness. Thus in the constellation of Virgo we see
one who very strongly represents this trait, the famous alchemist and doctor, Paracelsus, who died on 23
2
September, 1541. At his death, Jupiter was in Leo while Mars and Saturn, together with the Sun and the two
lower planets Mercury and Venus, were in Virgo. Saturn was rather on the border-line between Virgo and
Libra. All this belongs to the peculiar place of this great individuality in the spiritual life of his time. For on the
one hand Paracelsus, as an alchemist, was living within that spiritual stream which sought by a more inner
mystic path to penetrate to a grasp of the divine and spiritual; yet on the other hand he was already one who
consciously turned to the outer world, seeking to find the very roots of nature's being. We see this in the way he
brings forth a new conception of human nature and also to some extent a new science of medicine. Paracelsus is
a very living representative of the transition from medieval humanity, for whom the experience of the spiritual
world was fading away into the form of Mysticism, to the new tendency of soul which gave birth to modern
Science. True, in this scientific stream the consciousness of the reality of the spiritual world was and is in
danger of being completely stifled; however, this development was also destined and inevitable; a necessary
phase in our evolution, for it led us on the way to spiritual freedom.
This turn in the evolution of humanity is potently expressed in the constellation of Libra. Here we find
Saturn in Libra in the horoscopes of death of three great men—inaugurators of the scientific era: Copernicus,
originator of the new astronomy (died 24 May, 1543); Tycho Brahe, the famous Danish astronomer (died 24
October, 1601); and Johannes Kepler, the great German astronomer and mathematician (died 15 November
1630). In the relation of these three to one another, the transition of humanity to the new outlook upon nature is
most impressively portrayed. Copernicus, purely by outward observation and mathematical experiment, laid the
foundations of a new world-system. Tycho Brahe took a very different line. As an astronomer he also devoted
himself whole-heartedly to outer observation of the starry heavens, but in the depths of his soul there was living
side by side with this, the memory of a former life on Earth when he had still been united far more intimately
with the wisdom of the ancient Mysteries. Hence, he rebelled against the central idea of the Copernican system
which was to place the Sun in the center of our solar system. He evolved a system of his own, wherein he tried
once more to give the Earth a position of central importance. Then Kepler came and worked with him as his
assistant. When Tycho felt his end approaching, he begged Kepler to base his future work not on the
Copernican but on his own, the Tychonic system. Kepler, however, did not do so; he based his subsequent
researches on the Copernican idea.
Thus we see connected with the constellation of Libra one of the greatest and most decisive turning-points
in spiritual evolution. The world-picture of the ancients, the Ptolemaic system for example, is superseded by the
modern point of view of scientific research and experiment. Men now devote themselves to the examination of
external visible nature.
Now we come into the sphere of Scorpio. There we see Mars, both in the horoscope of death of Kepler and
in that of Galileo (8 January, 1642). In Kepler's Mars is inscribed his turning to the Copernican system after the
death of Tycho Brahe; in Galileo's there is the period of his life when he was carrying on important researches
at Padua. Moreover, in the later life of Galileo it represents the time when he was taking a courageous stand on
behalf of the Copernican system before the Inquisition. To Scorpio, therefore, belongs a profound
transformation in the world-outlook of humanity. Kepler, Galileo, and many others confront the old ideas with
the foundations of an entirely new method of research. Scorpio has to do with the destruction of old traditions,
yet at the same time with transmutation and progress.
The cycle of evolution now leads us on into the sphere of Sagittarius. This sphere, as we already saw in the
destruction of the Order of Knights Templars, is connected with the rise and fall of spiritual streams in
evolution. There is a wrestling for spiritual continuity in human progress. The horoscope of death of Martin
Luther for example (18 February, 1546) is penetrated in a very decisive way with this constellation. Saturn and
Mars are in Sagittarius, while Jupiter is passing on from Sagittarius to Capricorn. Saturn in Sagittarius
represents the time when Luther, nailing his theses to the castle church at Wittenberg, set foot along the way
which led to separation from the Roman Church. Also in the horoscope of death of Leonardo da Vinci (2 May,
1519), Saturn is in Sagittarius. This is a picture of the great master’s struggles to achieve new spiritual points of
view in all the realms of art and science. It is true that his powers, as against the old, are not yet strong enough,
and most of his attempts fail any immediate success. Yet both in Leonardo and in Luther the sincere striving of
humanity for progress, for the achievement of new forms of life, comes to expression very strongly. This is the
mood of Sagittarius.
3
The next constellation, that of Capricorn, is filled with human destinies where the essential thing is the
carrying to a quick conclusion of some definite task or mission. Many examples might be given. One who
expressed this in a most beautiful way was the great painter Raphael. At his death, on Good Friday 1520, Saturn
was in Capricorn. This position of Saturn belongs to the events of Raphael's early youth when his mother died
and he was received as an apprentice into his father's studio. It was an important moment in destiny when this
tender and delicate being was thus removed from motherly protection and placed into a stream which was to
carry him so rapidly on to the greatest heights of creation. In the 30 years that followed, with an incredible ease
and lightness of touch, he brought the deepest spiritual truths through the medium of his art into humanity. This
carrying of a spiritual impulse to a successful issue, almost without resistance, is the true mood of Capricorn.
Through the constellation of Aquarius, cosmic spiritual streams of evolution make themselves felt in the
currents of human history on Earth. As a representative of this type we may mention once more Cardinal
Nicholas of Cusa, in whose horoscope of death Saturn and Jupiter were in conjunction in Aquarius. This was
connected above all, with the course taken by the Council of Basle during the 1430's. Nicholas of Cusa had
much to do with this Council. The men assembled there were really trying to come to terms with an event
which, in the spiritual realm, was already an accomplished fact. There was the growing rebellion of humanity
against the old hierarchic principle represented by the Roman Church. The tendency and purpose of the new age
then dawning was to embrace the whole of humanity in an united spirit, in spite of their immense
differentiations. Nicholas himself had spiritual experiences from which he learned that the most diverse,
including even the non-Christian religious faiths, could be brought to a peaceful understanding with one
another. That such a feeling could arise in a human soul, while simultaneously in the Reformation, powerful
movements were arising in opposition to the Roman Catholic authoritarian principle. All this is due to the fact
that in the spiritual world the transformation to a new age had already taken place. Human beings upon Earth—
those at the Council of Basle for example—experienced this fact, reflected as it was in the deep places of their
souls, and were at pains to master it and understand it. This human experience was inscribed in Aquarius
through such horoscopes of death as Nicholas of Cusa's.
We are led on from there into the constellation of Pisces where the great battles for the world-outlook and
the forms of life in humanity are pictured, as we explained when dealing with Scholasticism. Such battles may
extend over many centuries, and yet they have their focal points in single individuals, by whose horoscopes they
are then recorded in this constellation.
So, we can recognize the continuous passage of Western humanity through the entire Zodiac. About the 12th
and 13th centuries there is a kind of knot, a nodal point in evolution. On the one hand the last relics of old
faculties of knowledge, still in a more direct connection with the real spiritual world, were dying out, but
scholasticism by dint of heroic efforts in the life of thought was still able to maintain a slight connecting link.
Yet even this was ultimately lost in medieval Mysticism which, with its deep longing for an experience of the
divine, was no longer able to raise this experience into full consciousness. In consequence, humanity turned
more and more to observation and experiment of outer nature. In its turn this was the beginning of an evolution
reaching far on into the future, an evolution seeking liberation on the one hand from ancient rules and traditions,
while on the other hand people strove, in depths of soul, toward a new, freedom-born knowledge of the spiritual
relations of the Earth and the cosmos. Admittedly, in our time this deeper trait in modern evolution is often
misunderstood or even denied altogether; nevertheless, through the dark night of the prevailing emptiness of
spirit, a new kind of human being is striving toward the light. The outlines of this human being of the future are
written in the cosmos in the way we have now tried to indicate—however briefly.
We should not only look at single sections, chance perspectives of external history with their one-sidedness
and imperfections, we should try to see the whole. This whole is represented in the cosmic picture, and here the
wonderful thing is to see how the most opposite tendencies do, after all, enter harmoniously into the cosmos,
into the cosmic places they belong to by their several virtues and inspirations. So, they do find their place in this
striving toward the perfect human being; a striving written by humanity into the universe through horoscopes of
death, transcending the individual human being and summoning us ever and again to rise from our one-
sidedness into the whole.
This twelve-fold cosmic spiritual being can be experienced in the Zodiac, even as in the twelve-fold Zodiac
there is a real archetypal picture of the human form. We take our start from Aries, which represents a directing
4
and leading sphere comparable to the head of the earthly body; then it rays through the living spiritual body,
through a deep inwardness and out again into a sphere of movement and activity comparable to the limbs in the
earthly body. Thus are the several constellations of the Zodiac connected with the spiritual strivings of the
human being:
Aries: Spiritual impulses are poured into evolution.

Taurus: Impulses try to incarnate in Earth-realities; they meet with resistance and yet are able to bring
about transmutations.
Gemini: The light and the dark twin-brother; the spiritual impulse wrestles with the two aberrations of
the human soul: flightiness and Earth-boundness.
Cancer: The turning inward into inner silence.
Leo: Seeking the fountain-head of the Spirit in the depths of one's inner being.
Virgo: The gateway to the inner being of all Beings.
Libra: Out of the inner life, the turning outward once again; herein the problem of balance—the
decisive moments of the Spirit.
Scorpio: Ancient connections are destroyed and new must be created by clear purpose and good will.
Sagittarius: The alternation of great spiritual currents in human history.
Capricorn: The carrying of destined tasks to a successful issue in the earthly sphere.
Aquarius: The streams of spiritual life on Earth, as images of cosmic streams.
Pisces: The wrestling of the spiritual streams in humanity for the world's future.
As will be revealed in the further course, this macrocosmic spiritual human is a reality in every detail.
5

Article by Willi Sucher, June 1938
HOROSCOPES OF BIRTH AND DEATH
When we recall how the people of the Middle Ages looked up to the starry heavens, we have the impression
that the stars at that time spoke a language we were still able to understand. Slowly, however, the language of
the stars was reduced to silence; even during the Middle Ages it was partly so. Increasingly, the sublime
wisdom of the stars of olden time died into mere tradition, to the mere handing-down of old and, to some extent,
newly added rules. This is the point of utter silence we have reached today.
On the other hand, as we have seen, through the constellations of death a new relation to the stars has been
explored. Fresh spiritual substance is carried out into the cosmos by the human being; the world of stars is
thereby, in a certain sense, rejuvenated. Manifold, richly colored, shot through and through with Earth-reality,
human destinies are written now into the heavens. We now speak to the stars—at least, we begin to speak,—
even as once upon a time the stars spoke to us. This is the great world-turning-point through which humanity is
passing, affecting, as it does, all aspects of human life. We must learn to face it with clear consciousness.
The great cosmic Spirit-Man who is revealed when in the mirror of the constellations of death, we consider
a whole period of history as we did in last month's article, does not remain only in the outer cosmos as a thing
separate from us on Earth. On the contrary, it is intimately connected with the historic course of our earthly
evolution. Moreover, with the changing of humanity on Earth, so too the macrocosmic human becomes
transformed. It happens in this way: the spiritual substance streaming out from each person through horoscopes
of death into the cosmos, comes back again to humanity on Earth in questions and problems of destiny. What
former periods and generations carried outward through the horoscopes of death, comes to life again in the
horoscopes of birth in later epochs. A given age can only solve the problems of earthly life, taken as a whole, up
to a certain point. Never can things be brought to a finish within the earthly life alone. Unending change and
transmutation is the destiny of Earth. This also is revealed in the relation of one to the heavens. In the
horoscopes of birth of humanity of later times, there is re-born what humanity of former times carried up to a
certain point of development.
A historic example may serve to illustrate this. There stands in history the mighty figure of Dante Alighieri,
who made an overwhelming impression on the people of the Middle Ages with his great poem, The Divine
Comedy. We will consider the horoscope of his death (14 September 1321) and see how it reflects his path of
destiny.
Dante's life was full of drama; cut across by revolutionary changes and events. In the hidden space of time,
his life is comparable to an ellipse with its two foci. The one was in his youth which he describes in his earliest
poem Vita Nuova. From a certain moment onward, as he tells us, his inner life was centered in that mysterious
being whom he calls Beatrice. From the historical records it has never been possible to ascertain who, in the city
of Florence where Dante lived, this maiden Beatrice was. Nay, some have even doubted if she existed at all as
an earthly being, and whether Beatrice is not an allegorical figure to represent some kind of inner experience.
Dante describes the overwhelming impression she made on his inner life. The deepest emotions were stirred
in him when she came near. Above all, her early death became a determining factor in his development. First, it
inspired him to tell of his experience with her in the Vita Nuova. At the end of the poem he tells how the soul of
the dead Beatrice appeared to him in wondrous clarity and promised to open out to him far more in time to
come. We are thus brought to the other focal point in Dante's life, the origin and creation of the Divine Comedy.
Between the two poles there came the time when he worked for his native city and attained high office. But the
political revolutions in Florence altered the course of his life. He was obliged to leave, never again to return. For
in his absence, sentence of banishment was passed on him. He spent the last twenty years of his life in restless
wandering from one city or monastery to another. It was in this time that the Divine Comedy rose to its dramatic
greatness.
Fig. 1: DANTE - Died 14 September 1321
Now we discover the signature of these two poles in Dante's horoscope of death (Figure l) in the position of
Jupiter in Capricorn on the one hand, and of Mars in Leo on the other, very nearly in opposition to each other.
The past transits of Saturn, described in a former article, inscribe Jupiter in Capricorn as the time when the Vita
Nuova originated—the poem dedicated to Beatrice. Whilst in the opposite quarter of the heavens—over against
Jupiter—there is inscribed the hour of birth of the Divine Comedy, Good Friday 1300. On this day, Dante
underwent a deep inner experience. He tells of it in the opening passages of the Divine Comedy, followed
immediately by the awe-inspiring description of his journey through hell, where he witnesses the pain and
torture of souls condemned to eternal punishment. To begin with, Virgil is his guide through the realm of
shades. Later on, when in the further course of his long wandering through the spheres of after-death existence
he is allowed to rise into heaven, it is the blessed Beatrice who becomes his guide. We see then how the two
aforesaid foci in Dante's life belong together and how harmoniously this is reflected in the constellations at his
death. Through his love of Beatrice, preserved in youthful purity, Dante is led from the places of purgatory and
damnation into the spheres of eternal bliss.
This great and world-embracing experience of Dante's was carried out into the cosmos through Jupiter in
Capricorn, but it did not simply remain there. It flowed back again into the earthly sphere to be transmuted, and
it is wonderful to see how it arises again in the horoscopes of birth of those of later time; for example, in that of
Michelangelo (6 March 1475 - Fig. 2).
Fig. 2 MICHELANGELO - (Inner Circle) Horoscope of Birth, 6 March 1475

(Outer Circle) Prenatal Horoscope, 20 May 1474
In the first place, in Michelangelo's horoscope of birth, Jupiter is at the same place as at Dante's death in the
constellation of Capricorn. This fact already seems to suggest a kind of cosmic reminiscence, as if there were
2
some hidden bond between the poet and the artist. But it is not this alone; deeper connections are revealed when
we take the prenatal horoscope into account.
Mars, for example, at the beginning of Michelangelo's prenatal constellation, is in Leo in the same cosmic
place as at Dante's death. Then it goes on to Capricorn, the place occupied by Jupiter, where the two planets are
in conjunction in the ninth prenatal Lunar cycle. Moreover, this is later the place of the ascendant of birth. Now
as was indicated in earlier articles, the prenatal lunar cycles can be referred to the rhythms of earthly life and
destiny, and in this sense we find the prenatal conjunction of Jupiter and Mars related to the period about 1534-
35 in Michelangelo's life. This is precisely the time which throws the greatest light on the peculiar connection
between Michelangelo and Dante. For it was in these years that Michelangelo began his work on the great
fresco in the Sistine Chapel, known as the Last Judgment. If we recall this picture of the overwhelming drama
of souls ascending into heaven in contrast to others falling headlong to damnation, we realize that it is born
entirely out of the world of thought of the Divine Comedy. Hermann Grimm, in his well-known Life of
Michelangelo, writes very fully of this connection. Looking upon the Last Judgment, it seems to him as though
Dante had been standing at Michelangelo's side as he worked and had ‘breathed his spirit into him’. To anyone
familiar with Dante, Michelangelo's work cannot but appear as a second revelation of the same inspiring genius.
The flowing stream of verse in which the poet's fantasy was living, was cast into everlasting forms by the
painter.
We see then how a certain world of thought, the striving of a whole historic epoch for the essential spiritual
being of humanity carried through all the storms and travails of an individual human destiny, flows through the
horoscope of death into the cosmos. Thereafter, born again into the earthly life of a person of later time, it
undergoes a transmutation. We may feel how such a spiritual substance, filled ever more with the spiritual life-
blood of individual human beings, grows ever more transformed and, reaching far beyond the—no doubt—
limited pictures and imaginations of a particular historic epoch, will at long last emerge in a true realization of
the spiritual world.
It would be of great value now to see how this impulse which we see living in such men as Dante and
Michelangelo, the impulse to take hold of the after-death existence in all reality, lives on in human evolution.
Jupiter in Capricorn was the important constellation in their case, and we can trace this further. There lived in
more recent times a man who in his personal life and destiny experienced the connection of the living and the
dead in a quite new way. We refer to the poet Novalis—pseudonym of Georg Friedrich von Harden berg, born
on 2 May 1772. Once again, it is the prenatal horoscope (Figure 3) which tells us most. During the prenatal
period, Jupiter went through Capricorn, while Mars took its start from Leo. In broad outline we are reminded
again of Dante's horoscope of death. Indeed, there is an amazing similarity between the destinies of the two
men. It seems as though the task which Dante carried through his life, with real greatness yet subject to the
limitations of the Middle Ages, became in an infinitely deep and tender way the underlying motif of Novalis'
life on Earth.
Fig. 3 NOVALIS - (Inner Circle) Horoscope of Birth, 2 May, 1772

(Outer Circle) Prenatal Horoscope, 2 August, 1771
3
Dante, as he describes, was called by the heavenly love of Beatrice to penetrate into the spheres of after-
death existence. It was Beatrice who led him up into the highest regions. A similar destiny guided Novalis.
Early in life he came to love a child. She was a being who made an almost heavenly impression on those who
knew her—Sophie yon Kuehn. To the young poet she seemed almost like an apparition from the ideal world of
his poetic dreams. Yet delicate and frail as she was, she did not long remain to shed light upon his earthly way.
She died in her 14th year soon after Novalis knew her, and he was left in profound despair. Struck down with
grief, he longed for death; indeed at first he resolved to starve himself to death. Yet gradually his overwhelming
grief dissolved into a more quiet mood of resignation. Now there began for him the brief, yet highly fertile
period of creative work, culminating in his own early death, 25 March, 1801.
The first thing that arose out of his grief was a poetic cycle, Hymns to the Night. Beginning with lamentation
and yearning for death, the poem ends like an apotheosis of the after life—the only real realm of being. It is as
though Sophie's soul, after her death, had opened for him the gateway of knowledge, the reality of the creative
spirit. Again and again, Novalis spoke of the absolutely real link he felt with her soul. Out of this mood he gave
birth to a great number of aphorisms, thoughts about all the realms of life and science and philosophy, proving
in truth that he had gained the deepest insight, even into the spiritual essence of the material world around him.
His final work was the novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, which he did not live to finish. In it, however, there
occurs a Fairy Tale, narrated by the character named Klingsor, which is of the deepest import for an
understanding of Novalis' spirit. The lovely pictures of this tale conceal a marvelous perspective of the spiritual
future of humanity and of the Earth. Even as Dante gave us his awe-inspiring picture of the life after death and
Michelangelo portrayed the dread parting of the ways in his Last Judgment, so too Novalis gives in this fairy
tale an overwhelming picture of the cosmic picture, and yet withal, it is a picture of salvation.
If we reflect how variedly these three, in the widely different historic spheres in which they lived, formed
and transmuted the same spiritual constellation of Jupiter in Capricorn, we may divine how the great cosmic
Spirit-Man is again and again transmuted and receives clearer and clearer outline as humanity goes on into the
future.
The question will now occur: How does such an impulse, carried as a spiritual Leitmotif through a life on
Earth, appear again in a cosmic light in the horoscope of death? One who showed this relationship in a very
penetrating way was Leo Tolstoi, born 9 September, 1828 and died 20 November, 1910. Since for our purpose
the constellation of the prenatal epoch is more important, we will put this in comparison with the horoscope of
death in Figure 4 below. We recognize at once the close relation of the two pictures in the heavens. We see it
most of all when we look in the direction of Scorpio and Libra.
Fig. 4: LEO TOLSTOI - (Inner Circle) Prenatal Horoscope, 9 Dec., 1828

(Outer Circle) Horoscope of Death, 20 Nov., 1910
Remembering now what was said before about the essence of the Zodiac and its connection with the
horoscopes of death, remembering too how this spiritual substance descends again and is rejuvenated in the
destinies of later individuals, we shall say of Tolstoi’s prenatal horoscope that the planets concentrated in Libra
and Scorpio indicate how deeply his individuality was connected with the striving for true balance in the
passage from the inner to the outer world, and moreover, how he was standing in the midst of the breakdown of
4
old forms of life and had to wrestle for the sustaining forces of the future. Much has been published in recent
years of Tolstoi’s dramatic life. We find it indicated to a high degree in his prenatal horoscope. The horoscope
of death on the other hand reveals how Tolstoi had come to grips with these pre-destined tasks during his life on
Earth. We must consider once again the past transits of Saturn. We need only take two transits, for example, and
we shall recognize how eloquent the constellation is.
In the year 1881, Saturn passed by its own position in the horoscope of death; in 1865 it passed the place in
Libra where the planets crowd in the horoscope of death. In 1865 we see Tolstoi, after a somewhat eccentric
youth, married and settled down to a fairly ordered life. Out of this sphere he wrote his novel War and Peace,
which breathes the wide perspectives, the far vistas of the Russian language and the Russian folk-soul. The
inner quiet, the almost physical tranquility of this work is an expression of one side of Tolstoi’s being. Quite
another side is manifest in the experiences he underwent about the year 1881. It was an overwhelming inner
crisis. All that he had from the past, all his accepted standards of religious and social life fell into ruins. The
mood of Scorpio arose—destruction of the old—while at the same time a new impulse seized him. He wrestled
his way through to new conceptions of the religious and social life of humanity. It is this aspect of his being
which is reflected in Saturn's position in Aries—Aries, which has so much to do with the in-pouring of fresh
impulses into evolution.
We see then how the problem of Libra and Scorpio, indicated in Tolstoi's prenatal horoscope and belonging
to the great inner crises and decisions of his life, was transmuted into a new beginning after all—Saturn in Aries
at his death. Even if, to a superficial view, Tolstoi's great individuality with his, no doubt, primitive and naive
beginnings may seem to have gotten little further than to create beautiful literature, still from his horoscope of
death we have the impression that the new social impulses he set on foot will thrive, and maybe in some future
time reach their fulfillment.
5

Article by Willi Sucher, July 1938
THE HOROSCOPE OF DEATH AND THE LIFE AFTER DEATH
In our preceding studies we have regarded the horoscope of death as a kind of epitome of the earthly life
which at the moment of death came to an end. It is a picture of that fruit of a one's earthly life which now goes
forth with one into the greater universe to go on working there. It is as though humanity were engaged upon the
painting of a mighty cupola; so did the horoscopes of death of individuals and of historic characters throughout
long periods of time reveal the human being's active relation to the starry heavens.
We shall also need to see this fact in the light of the soul's after-death experience. As was already indicated,
the horoscope of death looks out in two directions, not only toward the earthly life which is now past but also
toward the future, i.e. , in the first place, toward the after-death existence of the soul in spiritual worlds.
It was explained in relation to the horoscope of birth how the human soul comes down into this earthly life
in distinct stages recognizable to Spiritual Science. Seen in a larger view, the human individuality undergoes
three stages of development when entering upon the way to a new incarnation. We described them as the
passages through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon spheres respectively. We showed how the passages through the
Sun- and Moon-spheres are reflected in the horoscope or constellation of cosmic thought (the constellation of a
one's philosophy or world-conception) and in the prenatal constellation beginning about the time of conception
and lasting until birth. In like manner, it should be possible to follow the soul of a human being upon its way
through spiritual worlds after death.
It was the cosmic facts connected with the Moon which became our guiding line in finding one's prenatal
relations with the cosmos. Thus the prenatal horoscope was determined by the Moon's relation to the ascendant
of birth; the constellation of cosmic thought by the Moon’s position at the moment of birth in relation to the
lunar node. In effect, given the moment of birth, certain directions in the cosmos could be worked out. In these
directions we saw a picture of the soul's way of entry to the Earth and of its passage through the prenatal
spheres. The position of the Moon at birth was especially important; we described it as locating the direction of
the soul's entry from the Sun- into the Moon-sphere.
So, in the horoscope of death we should also be able to find a “direction”, an astronomical reality, a picture
of the way in which this human soul went forth into the cosmos. We have already mentioned the direction
toward the East in the moment of death, how the soul goes out into the eternal East. This direction, however,
only leads us from the Earth- into the Moon-sphere. To reach the Sun- and Saturn-spheres, the soul must receive
yet another “cosmic direction” just as it did upon the downward journey before birth. But now there is an all-
important difference: whereas it was the Moon that gave the direction of the soul's entry through birth, it is the
Sun at the moment of death that determines the direction of departure into higher spheres. This will throw light
on many other things.
Wherever the Sun is in the Zodiac at the moment of a human being's death is the cosmic direction, the
direction of the exit into the higher spheres of Sun and Saturn. If we know how to read the resulting cosmic
writing, we shall gain some idea of the spiritual mood into which the soul of the dead now finds its way.
Raphael for example, whom we already mentioned, died 6 April, 1520. About that time the Sun was
entering Aries. Aries, therefore, was the direction in which the soul of Raphael went forth into the cosmic
spaces. We have in this a picture tending to express which of the cosmic spiritual spheres this individuality
would seek his home in after death. Now the very symbol indicates an opening out, an upward breathing of
praise and joy, an expansion; as indeed, Aries always has to do with our receiving of, our openness to spiritual
forces. Out of this fact alone, the Sun in Aries at the death of Raphael, we can gain some feeling of what the
spiritual environment of this great individuality would be during the life after death, the more so if we bear in
mind how he had lived his earthly life, devoted in all his art to the creative ideas and impulses of spiritual
worlds. We find the same in the case of other human beings too, of whom we feel how they would be living in a
sphere of creative ideas after death, filled with real life and being in the spirit. The Sun was in Aries, for
example, at the death of Byron on 19 April, 1824. Also in Schiller's case, 9 May, 1805, the Sun was passing out
of Aries into Taurus, so that the cosmic picture is transformed a little here in the direction of Taurus. Schiller's
is an ideal world, rather more hard and fast, more strongly outlined, while Byron's has a somewhat lighter touch
of beautiful mobility.
Ever so much can thus be discovered about the life after death. Hearkening more deeply, we shall become
aware of how in this connection there is revealed the fundamental mood, the fundamental attunement of soul or,
we might say, the basic character of the astral body of such an individuality, made manifest in the cosmic
judgment. It is indeed not unlike what it was at the constellation of cosmic thought, only in the opposite
direction. We see the judgment of the cosmos upon that life and being which, as the first fruits of its soul, the
human being carries outward now into the cosmos.
If, for example, on 20 November, 1910 (Gregorian calendar), at the moment of Tolstoi's death, the Sun is
entering into the constellation of Scorpio, we shall recognize in this a picture of the inner form of Tolstoi's soul,
seen in the judgment of the cosmos, the particular cosmic sphere which draws this soul unto itself. If we then
look at the often dual and divided aspect of Tolstoi's being, entering vigorously at one moment into the life of
the senses and then again retiring into inner solitude of soul yet always restless and dynamic in his striving, we
shall recognize the inner kinship of this human soul with Scorpio in after-death existence.
This aspect, the place of the Sun in the Zodiac at the moment of death, is only one among several which are
important. We have already spoken of how one experiences in the first few days after death a great tableau of
one’s past earthly life, seeing the essential points of one’s earthly destiny as in a mighty picture. This is the first
stage of the pathway after death; it lasts only a few days, namely, till the etheric body is dissolved into the
cosmos.
The human soul will then have laid aside the physical and the etheric body. The only veil the inner spiritual
individuality still bears with it is the astral—the body of the soul. Now in this astral body all human cravings,
passions, and inclinations in all kinds and degrees, which the soul harbored or gave birth to during earthly life,
are still living. Before one can rise to higher spheres of the spiritual world, this aura of the soul must be
cleansed and purified. One must pass through the time of purification or purgatow, of which all religions based
upon spiritual insight tell. It was to this aspect that Dante gave poetic form in his Divine Comedy.
During this time, the fire of purgatory as it is called, the human soul undergoes once more all the
experiences of the past earthly life yet in an inverse form. In its true moral aspect we experience all the good
that we did to others. We feel the real effect of our deeds in the souls of other fellow-beings. Likewise we
experience the effects of our evil deeds in the souls of others to whom we did anything of wrong. Nay, the
inversion goes even farther than this for it is in inverse order—from the last events before death, backward in
time until birth—that the soul experiences all the events of the past life in their moral aspect. Moreover, this
time of purification, as Spiritual Science shows, lasts about a third of the length of the past earthly life. Thus if
the human being lived to the age of 60, the passage through this cosmic sphere will take about 20 years. Then
will the soul be so far purified as to be able to rise to higher regions of the spiritual world.
This length of time which the soul spends in the sphere of purification
will be found indicated in a quite real way in the horoscope of death. As
an example we will take the horoscope of death of Beethoven, who
died in Vienna on 26 March, 1827 at half past five in the afternoon.
The inner circle in Figure I shows what the constellations were at
this moment. Particularly striking is the position of Saturn in the
meridian. It is as though the heavy hand of Saturn were to weigh
down upon the scene. In effect, Beethoven’s life was not a very
happy one; he was profoundly lonely and bore a heavy load of
destiny upon his shoulders. His sufferings, his loneliness
especially, were due to his ear-trouble, leading at last to entire
deafness. It was precisely this loss of hearing which stood under
Saturn's influence. The first signs of ear-disease, which in spite of
every effort could never be arrested, appeared in the year 1798. In that year,
2
Saturn was approximately at the same place in the Zodiac as in the constellation of death. We have, therefore, to
deal with a past transit of Saturn in the sense explained in earlier articles, and this is all the more impressively
brought out by the position of Saturn in the meridian at death.
Deafness was indeed a heavy blow of fate for Beethoven, for it increasingly prevented him from exercising
his profession as a musician, yet mightily he wrestled his way through these difficulties. Under the compelling
force of his fate, he rose to even greater heights as a composer; one whose works were subsequently destined to
have the deepest influence upon humanity—as indeed they still have to this day. This applies most of all to the
Ninth Symphony which he described as the most mature work of his spirit. The Ninth Symphony was composed
at the time when Saturn was in Aries, i.e., in the very place where Mars was in the horoscope of death. It is,
therefore, related to Mars in Aries.
This much has been said to make the horoscope more real and vivid. What interests us, however, in our
present context is the position of the Sun, which at the moment of Beethoven's death was in six degrees of the
sign of Aries, or the actual constellation of Pisces. Therefore, as explained above, this would be the cosmic
direction of departure of Beethoven's soul. but this is still not all. We must also take into account the relation to
this cosmic direction of the lunar node which at Beethoven's death was in sixteen degrees of the sign of Scorpio.
This refers to the ascending node; the descending node, being opposite, was in the sign of Taurus. We know that
the lunar nodes move backward through the Zodiac. Two years after Beethoven's death the descending node in
its backward course came into six degrees of the sign of Aries, i.e., to the place in the heavens where the Sun
stood at death. But we must follow the lunar node for a whole revolution further—18 years and 7 months. This
brings us to 22 December, 1847. On this day the descending node is again at the place occupied by the Sun in
the horoscope of death.
We have now reached what we were seeking. In the first place, 20 years have passed since Beethoven's
death in 1827. Beethoven lived to the age of 57, as he had been born in 1770. Remembering that the soul after
death, to begin with, goes through the sphere of purification, a journey
lasting about a third as long as the life on Earth, we shall expect this to
have taken about 19 or 20 years in the life-after-death of
Beethoven. Thus in the real cosmic happenings we have indeed
something that answers to the inner way of experience of this
human soul, inasmuch as 20 years after his death,
approximately at the end of the time of purification, the
lunar node returns to the place in the heavens where the
Sun was at the moment of death.
It may be asked: What is it that justifies our relating the
soul's after-death experience—the passing through the “sphere
of purification”—to these particular cosmic happenings? To give an answer to this question, we will call to
mind once more the significance of the lunar nodes described in an earlier article (Figure 2).
The nodes are the points of intersection of the Sun's and of the Moon's orbits. These are the points where the
Sun- and the Moon-sphere come into contact—where they join hands, as it were. For we regard the paths or
orbits of the Sun and Moon as marking the outermost lines of demarcation of the solar and lunar spheres—the
several equators, so to speak, of these celestial spheres. The Moon-sphere rotates within the Sun-sphere so that
the points of intersection wander round, the rhythm being 18 years and 7 months for a complete revolution.
Then it comes about that the lunar node returns again and again to the essential place described above, which
marks the cosmic direction of the soul's departure from the Earth. For Beethoven this happened, as we said, in
the year 1847, for then the node returned to six degrees of Aries, the place the Sun was in at his death.
Now we can also express this cosmic fact in a still more concrete way. For the soul spends the time of
purification within the Moon-sphere. It is there that the lower nature must be purified and laid aside. Not till this
stage of after-death existence is over (once more, as Spiritual Science shows, it takes a third as long as the past
earthly life) can the soul enter the higher sphere, that of the Sun. This is the moment when, through the lunar
node, the Sun- and the Moon-sphere are in contact precisely in the individual direction of the soul's departure.
3
The same connection could be shown in many other instances. Unless there have been some organic
idiosyncrasies, we shall always be able to trace this approximate third of the length of the earthly life in
connection with the horoscope of death, pointing to the spiritual connection which has been described.
Very significant is the constellation of the planets at the moment thus indicated, i.e., at the moment of exit
from the Moon- into the Sun-sphere. In Beethoven's case, Mars is again at the same place in the year 1847 as at
the moment of death, in the constellation of Aries. Mars has been lifted, as it were, on to a higher level,
signifying the passage of the soul from the Moon- into the Sun-sphere. We may conclude that this is a point of
particular significance which the cosmos wishes especially to emphasize. As we said before, this Mars in Aries
belongs to the time of Beethoven's life when his great masterpiece the Ninth Symphony was created. Now that
the soul is admitted to higher spheres, it lights up once again in cosmic judgment, it is the spiritual horizon, the
cosmic and creative background of this great work of art which is here lighting up in the sphere of Aries—of
Idealism (as was explained in an earlier article). It is as though in the Thinking of the cosmos, the spiritual
archetype would now appear. Fired with inner will, it is the world of ideas and ideals which was the hidden
reality in this, the greatest work of the composer's genius. Only after death does the Ninth Symphony receive its
cosmic meaning, maturing in the soul of Beethoven to gigantic stature. During his earthly life Beethoven
experienced an ideal—nay, a whole world of human ideals—and brought it down into the strong reality of his
music. Now, as the purest and most essential element of his being, he is allowed to give it to the Gods in
heaven. For as he enters the sphere of the Sun, he is returning into the bosom of the Gods, and with the fruits of
his earthly work he may now enrich even the archetypal, cosmic sphere from which it came, the sphere of
Idealism in the divine and cosmic thinking.
Herein we have at least a hint, an indication of the experiences of the human soul during the life after death.
These things are not at all easy to set forth in outward words; they want to be experienced far more in the inner
silence.
4

Article by Willi Sucher, August 1938
THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF ASTROLOGY
Having reached a certain conclusion in our descriptions of the new outlook in astrology, we may consider
once again the fundamental question: What is the spiritual import of astrology for our own time, and how ought
it to develop toward the future?
On the one hand it is undoubtedly the case that with such points of view as have here been adduced, it will
be possible, as a matter of pure knowledge, to reach a fairly deep and penetrating picture of the structure of the
universe and of the way the human being stands within it. On the other hand we are living in a period of
evolution when, in these matters as in all others, the question is quickly asked: What is the utilitarian value of it
all? Astrology, as commonly practiced in our time, seeks in a very drastic, not to say materialistic way, to
foretell the destinies of people from the events in the starry heavens about the time of birth.
These are the two points of view we must encounter today wherever astrology is concerned. On the one
hand is the legitimate striving for pure knowledge of the relations between people and the world of stars, while
on the other hand there is the candid entry into realms of egoistic wish and selfish curiosity. Yet it would not
avail us, on vague moral grounds, to reject the setting-up of horoscopes as a means of prognosis concerning life.
As to the rightness or wrongness of any thing, we have to base our views on clearly thought-out scientific
grounds and on an insight into wider sociological effects. This applies most of all to astrology.
Up to a certain point it is indeed the case that many striking things can be deduced from horoscopes of birth
with regard to a one's course of destiny. Yet as we look more closely, these things appear in a very different
light as compared to the utilitarian point of view from which so many people start. Humanity has, in fact, long
outgrown this craving to penetrate into the secrets of personal fate. What we are really seeking for today has not
yet risen to full consciousness, so we fall back again and again and become overwhelmed by the old phantom.
For, in effect, it is but a phantom that the horoscope, as commonly applied, reveals. Look at it clearly and
calmly: What does the horoscope, interpreted by old tradition or in the light of new empirical results, reveal? If
it were skillfully interpreted, one may learn from it certain details of events in one's own family or of one's own
possibilities regarding calling, social standing, and the like; indeed, not with the nominalistic clarity which
people look for nowadays, but at least in outline, like some distant mountain-range. Yet when all this is done,
however expertly, what have we to help us in the last resort on a single step in life? I may know that in a given
year of my life a change will take place in my whole situation. I may even know if it will be in a good or in a
bad direction. After all, such knowledge—if knowledge it be called—is more bane than blessing. It takes
something from my human stature, makes me inactive and tends all unawares to harness me to something
fateful, cosmically automatic, extra-human. It neither gives me power to avert or to transmute impending evil,
nor to accelerate or hold fast the good. It has at most the value of foretelling certain things in more or less dim
outline. Such fore-knowledge is admittedly a thing of doubtful blessing.
The fundamental question we touch upon here is that of liberty or of pre-destination in human life and
action. Not that we wish to embark on philosophic arguments upon this well-known theme; only we may bring
together all possibilities of astrological understanding in the attempt to find a solution leading to a valid
judgment as to what astrology can be for the immediate social future of humanity.
In former articles we have already evolved one point of view in striking contrast to the whole sphere of
horoscopes of birth. It is the aspect of the horoscope of death. This, in itself, obliges us in seeking knowledge, to
look in quite another direction than for the horoscopes of birth. For in the latter case, as a general rule, the
human life concerned is still to come; we tend almost inevitably to the mood of prognosis, as of a destiny not
yet unfolded. The horoscope of death on the other hand comes at the end of human life. There is no possibility
of foretelling any immediate, tangible future. Earthly realities are for the moment utterly extinguished for the
soul who has now passed through the gate of death. Nevertheless the horoscopes of death offer real and
valuable prospects. They can give, as former articles have shown to some extent, very interesting knowledge of
the deeper character of the person concerned. We must only be prepared to change the direction of our quest
deeply and radically if we would truly appreciate this new form of astrology.
Quite apart from the fact that in the horoscope of death we have a summing-up of the destiny of a past
earthly life, which is a looking backward in time (the opposite of what the horoscope of birth implies), another
most important point emerges. The primary thing we look at in the horoscope of death is the human being, for
upon one’s inner quality, the quality of the starry constellations will now depend; it is the human being's activity
which gives to the events among the stars their meaning and their import about the time of death. We have
shown how the lives of some were recorded in the constellations of the planets and the Zodiac. If from the
human being nothing of significance is written in the cosmos, then too the constellations of the stars, whatever
they may outwardly appear as, will be without inner weight, empty of content like the one who bears them. If,
on the other hand, by virtue of our life on Earth we have inscribed into the universe of stars (through the past
Saturn transits in the horoscope of death as shown in former articles) good deeds of value for humanity, then
and then only will a constellation—significant in the sense of classical astrology—be of real meaning, not only
for us, but it may be for all humanity; for the whole historic period which follows. Such things were instanced
in our former essays.
We must, however, bear in mind that this way of looking at things will deeply and radically change our
aspect of our relation to the world of stars. By virtue of the horoscope of death we no longer have a relation to
the world of stars which inspires the question: What is the meaning of such or such constellation for my own
personal life? The question is now reversed. For if we earnestly let all that which is revealed in the horoscopes
of death work upon us, we will be led to see that our own spiritual evolution—no matter of what kind it be—is
of significance for the world-all. Our real relation to the starry world, revealed in the horoscope of death, is the
expansion of our being to the being of the cosmos, the making manifest of our seemingly minute existence—as
of a speck of dust within the universe, for so it seems to us on Earth—in its true cosmic magnitude and value.
We are the primary reality in this case. We receive, as it were, the starry heavens into our own being. According
to our portion, according to the measure of development we have attained in present time, we fill and flood the
constellations which we are united with through death, with our own inner warmth and inner light.
This radically different relation of our being to the starry worlds gives rise to a further hope. The change of
aspect and direction, following logically and inevitably from the horoscope of death, may perhaps also lead us
out of the blind alley into which the traditional astrology of birth has tended.
For the horoscope of death the matter is comparatively simple. This horoscope, in the very nature of the
case, represents a certain finish; the relative conclusion of a pathway, the fruit of an earthly life that is now
done. In the horoscope of birth, or rather in the whole complex of horoscopes and constellations about the time
of birth, we should then have to seek the opposite of something finished, namely a development in its inception,
a germ, a seed of evolution. This picture is indeed the true one, provided we seek no more in it than it contains.
The true horoscope is something germinal, bearing within it all the potentialities of development which can,
however, only be turned into Earth-reality under quite definite conditions.
Precisely herein lies the secret of the new relation between ourselves and the world of stars. Through the
very fact of our descent into incarnation we are indeed connected with the world of stars, and yet we are no
longer absolutely dependent on that world. On the contrary, in our age and in the future we are called upon to
take the world of stars, which as an individual we belong to, with us into our earthly deeds, into our earthly
feeling and thinking. The transmutation which then takes place all through our earthly life, if we are a person of
spiritual striving, thereby becomes a transmutation not only of ourselves but even of the world of stars! Thus
can we understand it now. All that appears as the fruit of an earthly life in the horoscope of death was there
already as a seed or germ in that of birth; it only had to go through the transmutations, through the testing fires
of a life on Earth to reach maturity.
To give a more concrete background to these thoughts, we may have recourse again to an example. We take
once more from a former article the data of Richard Wagner's horoscope of birth and his prenatal horoscope,
and place them side by side with his horoscope of death.
In the prenatal horoscope (Fig. 1) we drew attention, among other things, to one outstanding fact, namely
the passage of Venus before Saturn at the beginning of the seventh prenatal lunar cycle. In manifold
2
connections we pointed out how this conjunction was related to the 44th year of Wagner's life, the year 1857.
This was a year of special importance, as it was the time when Parsifal was first conceived. It was a kind of
death-experience which Wagner underwent at this moment. The outer world was dark about him and so was the
inner world of his own soul when on that Good Friday morning, like an inner resurrection-light, the picture of
Parsifal suddenly dawned upon him. Now from the conjunction of Venus and Saturn in the prenatal horoscope
we might, at most, have foretold a difficult situation in his life at this moment. The awe-inspiring drama of his
real life—what actually happened in that year—could not possibly have been found in this way. From this
comparison we can see best of all what is at once the value and the limitation of astrological prognosis. For the
mastering of his life's situation it would have been of little help to Wagner on that Good Friday morning if he
had known of all these difficulties in advance. His depression might have been all the greater for such
knowledge. The element that helped him wrestle his way through to the light had quite another source than in
his horoscope. It was his guiding genius that now recalled to him the poem of Wolfram von Eschenbach, read
long ago, and then gave birth within his soul to his own creation—Parsifal.
Figure 1 Figure 2
We have, therefore, this picture: on one hand in the horoscope there is the plan of the earthly life that is now
beginning. As we described it before, the prenatal horoscope is an image of the ether-body, forming and
molding the physical in a quite individual way and working into the human being's destiny. Yet what it fashions
is in reality no more than the forms—the hollow molds, as it were—waiting to be filled with another content.
Thus the conjunction of Venus and Saturn in Richard Wagner's horoscope is but a mold; in itself it tells us little.
What is important is what flowed into this mold in the subsequent life of Wagner's individuality. Another
person would have made something altogether different of it. It is the human individuality who in reality makes
the horoscope, not the horoscope the individuality! Therefore, the truest astrology is that which is able to
confront the stars with strong and world-embracing individuality. Then it will no longer be a question of trying
to decipher our own personal destiny as written in the stars; but in the strength of our thinking, feeling, and
willing we will be trying to bear our individual share of the destiny and riddle of the stars themselves. Ideally
speaking, we can imagine Wagner in that moment having some consciousness of the cosmic events before his
birth. Aware of the immanent question which was contained in that conjunction of Venus and Saturn, he would
still not have regarded it as in any way determining his fate. Out of such consciousness, we may imagine his
sense of responsibility would have grown immeasurably more than it did, out of the range of personal motives
and desires. He would have been at once aware of his responsibility to cosmic worlds.
These cosmic happenings and relationships are by no means speculative. What bears fruit in our life appears
again in the cosmic world when the time is there, i.e., in the horoscope of death. Take once again Richard
Wagner's life on Earth. The fulfillment he brought into the conjunction of Venus and Saturn on that Good
Friday 1857, looked at in its deepest meaning, was like salvation even to the Venus-forces. All this is manifest
as the fruit of his life in his horoscope of death. In Fig. 2 we have represented, underneath the prenatal
horoscope, Wagner's horoscope of death. Venus is by itself in Sagittarius, free of all other aspects. Moreover,
3
into this Venus, through Saturn's chronicle, the event of 1857 is recorded (past transit of Saturn, as before
explained). For in the year 1857, Saturn stood in Gemini directly opposite the place where Venus stood at death.
Thus we can clearly see what transmutation has taken place between the cosmic poles of birth and death.
Quite another picture arises in the starry heavens at Richard Wagner's death than at his birth, and yet there is
again an intimate connection between the two. One would almost say that the heavy aspect of Saturn in
Sagittarius in the prenatal life—weighing down as it did upon Venus too—has been overcome in the course of
his life, for in the horoscope of death Venus is free of all embarrassments.
This is the point of view which will be even more important for the future of astrology. So long as we do not
realize it, all efforts in astrology today will remain fruitless and will grow even more so. It is only a short time
ago in human evolution that it had no longer become important to know what a particular constellation signifies
for earthly life. Indeed, we are now even more entering into conditions wherein these things will no longer
signify at all for human life. We can no longer expect anything of them in the way we did in former times. We,
on the contrary, will have to be the givers. We will give to the stars, and in this giving grow ourselves, up to the
stature of the stars. A time is now approaching when it will be the task of a new astrology to evoke in humanity
a strong spirituality, a spirituality which will alone be able to fill with sustenance and substance the empty
molds, the hollow forms of the horoscope. Therefore, the time for casting horoscopes is really past. It will no
longer do to ask, what is the influence of the Moon's or the Sun's position at one's birth, or the like. Maybe in
one case or another we shall still get answers in this way, but the answers will not have sustaining force. On the
contrary, they will take away from us. Yet it is altogether different if we ask this other question: What the
position of the Sun or Moon or other planets at or before our birth requires of us by way of independent, self-
made earthly deeds and sentiments and thoughts. Unlimited would be the scope of an astrology tending to this
kind of self-education. This alone would lift us up to our true cosmic station.
It goes without saying that this change of heart and mind would in time give rise to quite other institutions,
even in the physical world, than have grown up today around astrology. Yet the very first step of all is to give
birth to a fundamentally different outlook within our own being.
4
1946
April, Renewal of Culture?

Written for : C R C - D I A R Y, No 1, by Eleanor C. Merry
(If any copies of these Diaries still exist with articles by Willi,
we would appreciate having copies.)
May/June, Time Signals from the Universe C R C - D I A R Y,

Nos. 2&3; by Eleanor C. Merry
Renewal of Culture?
Article by Willi Sucher
Cooperation for the Renewal of Culture - D I A R Y, No. 1, April 1946, by Eleanor C. Merry
If today one tries to think or to speak of a Renewal of Culture, one feels almost shouted down by the
demonic laughter of a host of invisible beings around oneself.
Renewal of Culture? What do you want to renew? Do not all the signs that you see around you point to the
absolute decline of that culture, or civilization, which you want to renew? Some of those mocking voices even
go so far as to say that humanity has been proven a failure and therefore is condemned to destruction. The
answer depends very much on the human will.
After the First World War, a modern prophet stood up whose name was Oswald Spengler, and he wrote the
well-known Decline of the West. He did not speak out of Divine Inspiration like the prophets of the Old
Testament; he worked with modern scientific means. With the tools of mathematics, historic analysis and
comparison, he constructed the picture of the unavoidable downfall of Western culture.
Have the events not proven that he was right? Has not civilized mankind reached a condition in which it
might destroy itself any minute? Responsible statesmen have acknowledged this danger.
Yet, this modern prophet, Oswald Spengler, has failed with regard to one of the fundamental ideas of his
theory. He compared the present culture with cultures in olden times. From this method of comparison, he
derived his knowledge of the “hour” or “season” in which our present culture lives. In olden times, numerous
cultures grew up, flourished, fell into decline and finally perished. But when one such cultural organism
perished, another one had already grown up beside it. Thus the thread of humanity was never broken. The
Chalice of human culture wandered, as it were, over the surface of the Earth. The process of evolution was
horizontal with regard to earthly space. This law is the foundation of Spengler’s theory.
However, this law was overrun during the time of the great migrations of nations in the first centuries AD.
When those Germanic tribes appeared at the frontiers of the Roman Empire, its civilization was already in the
process of decay. Those so-called barbaric tribes infiltrated into the deadly sick and weakened body of the
Roman culture. They came as conquerors, who had the impulse toward new culture within them. But after the
conquest, they did not move back into those regions from which they had migrated. In earlier times, the young
nations had also conquered their old and declining neighbors, but they strictly preserved the centers of their
cultural gravity in their home countries. This was done by the Egyptians, the Persians, the Chaldeans and
Babylonians.
Thus, when the Germanic tribes mixed with the remnants of Roman civilization, they had broken the old
law, and a new culture prepared itself under the surface of the declining Roman civilization. This new culture
reaches its culmination in the Age of the Renaissance.
The evolution of humanity had turned away from a horizontal expansion of the new offspring of culture and
moved toward vertical penetration. The great migrations that may finally lead to Renewal of Culture, now take
place throughout the layers or strata of the social structure of humanity. This does not exc1ude the point of
view that the vertical tendency of cultural evolution started much earlier in history,
The events in our modern time illustrate this change in drastic terms. A deep and justified aversion against
all methods of horizontal conquest and oppression sweeps today through humanity. These methods are
generally recognized as old and dangerous for the human race and can no longer serve the purpose of cultural
rejuvenation.
Moreover, the development of modern civilization has made impossible the existence of any virginal
regions of cultural life upon the surface of the Earth. The means of modern intercommunication are so
perfected that the destiny of one part of humanity is the destiny of the whole of humanity. No nation or race
can exclude itself from the events taking place in another section of humanity.
Therefore, if we were to accent the theory of the Decline of the West, we should also have to acknowledge
the fact that this disease of Decline could not be localized in the “West”. It would spread to the whole of
modern humanity, except perhaps those branches of humanity that do not at all come into question in respect of
positive new cultural development. In other words: The Decline of the West would finally mean the Decline of
Humanity. And it is of no avail to look for new cultural “shoots” to arise upon the horizontal structure of the
Earth.
Then where can we seek the springs of New Culture, if we do not want to surrender to fatalism? We must
develop a sense for the dynamics of the vertical line. We must learn to think in terms of cultural strata.
Even though we may be in the midst of the decline, let us be aware that this decline concerns only a certain
surface-stratum of humanity, although it may even comprise most of the present human population of the Earth.
It is of no use to deny this fact; each one of us experiences it painfully enough in daily life. Those who still do
not want to recognize it are either illusionist or liars. With one part of our being we are involved in the
processes of decline. But whether a future humanity will celebrate a new dawn of culture depends,
nevertheless, on the humanity of the present time. If we are not able to live with one part of our being in the
declining civilization, as far as we are forced to do so, and with another part in that stratum of modern
humanity, which bears the germs of totally new cultural prospects, then humanity might even drop to the level
of a kind of animal.
How long that stratum of creative and rejuvenating forces will be kept latent in the catacombs of
civilization, nobody can foretell. To a certain extent, it depends on the number of people who become aware of
these facts and act accordingly out of a sense of free responsibility for the future. But this is not the decisive
factor. Much more important is that this stratum of humanity, which is enshrined in every human being, should
be safeguarded against the corrupting influences of decadence.
The most dangerous of these corrupting attacks take place in the human soul itself. They are directed
against all realms of the cultural life, whether in art, science, religion or the social life, and they try to infuse
into them the old concepts of culture that bear the smell of dust and decay. How often do we see, for instance,
that an artist has the deep longing to create something totally new and inspiring in the realm of beauty? And
how often are these attempts smothered by sterile tradition in the most clever disguise?
In all branches of cultural and spiritual life, even in our social and daily life, we need totally new capacities
and ideas if a Renewal of Culture is to come. For some time humanity will not be able to abandon entirely the
capacities that spring from the intellect and which have created the civilization that is now declining. In as
much as we, as single human beings, desire these springs of intellectuality, so long will we be involved in the
decline. The manifestations of intellectuality bear the signs of decay.
Where can we find new capacities and ideas for a Renewal of Culture? Only if we go back to the
fundamentals of human and earthly existence will we find them. The Earth and the people upon it were born
from the cosmos. The universe of the stars is our mother.
The mother cannot rule over her child that has grown up, but she will still be able to give healthy advice, if
she finds ears ready to listen to her loving Wisdom.
We must create anew the fundamentals of every detail of our earthly life out of a spiritual understanding of
the secrets of the cosmos, because there must be the origin of everything that exists or comes into being on
Earth. Intellectuality can only create standpoints. But standpoints are always only fragments of truth. As
fragments, they are inclined to atomize the foundations of the single human being as well as the unity of the
body social. Unity and healthy universality can only be found by new spiritual means and faculties of
cognition, which are able to look up to the inner Being of the whole universe.
A new culture will need such universality as a remedy against the destructive and poisonous influences of a
declining civilization. These foundations of New Culture can best be laid at present in the silence of the
devoted work of however small groups of people gather for such purpose. They will need each other, to share
in carrying the burden of being involved in the inhuman chaos of the great decline of our time; but they will
also help each other to find, within the small space still left to individuals, the eternal cosmic fountains of New
Spiritual Life.
2
Time Signals from the Universe

Article by Willi Sucher
C R C - D I A R Y, Nos. 2&3; May/June 1946, by Eleanor C. Merry
In July 1946, the planet Saturn will pass from the constellation of stars called Twins, into that of Crab.
Does this event in the sky concern humanity on Earth? It concerns humanity as much, or as little, as do other
phenomena in the universe, for instance, the rotation of the Earth around its axis. This rotation is the foundation
of the measurement of time; it determines the day of 24 hours. Without this universal measurement of time,
derived from cosmic laws, the social life of humanity would fall into confusion.
May it also be possible that the other events in the sky, produced by rhythmic movements of the stars,
constitute a helpful foundation for the determination of time on a much larger scale than known hitherto? Is the
universe of the stars perhaps like a huge clock, with many hands and dial-plates that indicate the time of many
realms of existence, not only with regard to day, month or year?
Of course, the effect of the rotation of the Earth, which creates the alternation of day and night, is obvious.
These changes are forced upon us from outside our being; we cannot escape them and cannot alter the length of
day. Other events in the sky, such as the phases of the Moon, do not appear to have very much bearing on our
life with regard to time.
Nevertheless, might it be possible that we do not notice certain rhythms of time with regard to more subtle
rhythms of human existence—for instance, our cultural life, and so on—because we have not yet developed a
proper sense for time beyond our merely physical requirements? The fact that we live in an age in which
prophets appear, proclaiming a glorious ascent of humanity in the future, while others speak of ultimate decline,
shows that humanity has not achieved a universally valid cognition of ‘cultural time’. Humanity today is like a
congregation of human beings, who have lost their sense of time—through some strange accident—and are now
quarrelling among themselves as to whether it is morning or evening. Therefore, it is not astonishing that
modern humanity has managed to put itself into a cultural and social crisis that has no example in history. We
also need time signals from the universe with regard to the foundation of cultural life.
Saturn entered the constellation of Twins in June 1944, and it will enter the constellation of Crab in July
1946. This planet was called Chronos in olden times. People regarded it in those days as the visible manifesta-
tion of invisible forces in the universe, which had created time and held sway over it. Wouldn’t it be wise to
recover those ideas, in a sense, that is adequate to modern thinking?
Nobody will deny that the time when Saturn entered Twins, in June 1944, it opened a new phase in history.
What was the “time” that was then announced by Saturn? The constellation of Twins, which represents one of
the twelve ciphers on the great cosmic dial-plate of the so-called Zodiac, was recognized in olden times as the
cipher of human brotherhood. Even today we often find the Twins depicted as two human-like forms, yet
different in their qualities, which are interlinked in a certain way. If we accept this as objective tradition, which
still holds good and only needs to be translated into modern concepts, then we might interpret the “time signal”
of Saturn in 1944 in the following way:
“Again, as so often in history, the hour of brotherhood has struck. Ye people of good will, listen to the
message of this “hour”, and take into your hearts that the problem of brotherhood, the problem of healthy
relationships among people, should be in the foreground of all our doing. Unless you will recognize this
necessity, springing from the depths of your own historical development, you will realize in later years that you
have wasted this “hour” in the life of humanity, and the lack of what should have been accomplished will create
disaster, because lack and emptiness that has not been filled with genuine human endeavor will always fill itself
with the demons of destruction.”
Has humanity listened to this message? Certainly not. The problems were there; there is no doubt about it.
We experienced them in many ways, even in daily life, even in the tiniest human communities. If we look back
upon the history of the last two years and note the problems that arose with the end of the war in Europe and
Asia, then we must admit that not one of these problems has really been solved. The breaches between races,
peoples and nations, between single human beings, arc wider and more serious than ever.
All this happened because nobody was really aware of the “cultural hour” that had struck in the universe.
Instead of the true human “Twins”—i.e., the foundation of true human brotherhood—two other “Twins” have
arisen, two specters of destruction. They work among humanity as Delay and Confusion.
The seriousness of the present moment lies in the fact that humanity will have to go on carrying the burden
of the past into the time when the World Hour of Crab will strike. The Planet Saturn will enter the constellation
of Crab, or Cancer, in July 1946, and it will move through this constellation for about two years. This fact will
be underlined by another cosmic event. In the course of next year, Saturn will come very near the planet Pluto,
which was discovered only in 1930. Furthermore, in August 1947, the Sun and the planets Venus, Saturn and
Pluto will all stand in Cancer.
Events like these do not happen very often. The previous occasion when Saturn had moved so near to Pluto
(which is called a conjunction) was during the summer months of 1914, i.e., 33 years ago, and, therefore, it can
readily be seen that this conjunction is a very important time signal from the universe. It is somewhat similar to
the coming together of the big and small hands on a clock, for instance, at noon or midnight. The conjunction
of Saturn end Pluto in Cancer is really a zero-event, underlined by the fact that Venus and the Sun will also be
in the same constellation in August 1947.
Previously, in 1914, when the conjunction between Saturn and Pluto took place, they were both in course of
transition from Bull to Twins. Thus Saturn had announced another World hour of Twins, prior to that of 1944,
when Saturn had also entered Twins. A World hour of Twins demands from humanity nothing less than the
solution of the problems of human relationships. In 1914, this “Hour” was emphasized by the conjunction with
Pluto. It was not just an ordinary “Hour of Twins”, which happens every 30 years. It was an “Hour” that called
for supreme attention and asked for the settlement of the problems connected with the transition from old power
principles in the social realm to new principles of human Brotherhood. The conjunction of which we speak
took place in the space between Bull and Twins. Bull is the “cipher” of power, Twins is that of the Two, the
Brothers, who have to come to reasonable agreement, if they wish to exist.
One could not say that the demands of that “Hour of Twins” in 1914 and afterwards had been fulfilled.
Therefore, this unfulfilled request of the Spirit of Humanity has since haunted humanity; and in 1944, the bill
was again presented that had in the meantime mounted to enormous proportions.
Now we have to face the “World hour of Crab.” And again it is underlined by the conjunction with Pluto,
indeed, by the conjunction of Sun and Venus as well. What is the quest of this “World hour?” We may look
back in history to previous occasions when Saturn announced the “Hour of Crab”. For instance, we find it
mentioned in the story of Parsifal, or Pcrceval, who was the One who, after many trials in the world of doubt
and despair, became King of the Knights who guarded the Holy Grail, the vessel of eternal food and healing in
Montsalvage. The preceding King, Amfortas, had failed through his own weakness, and he was suffering from
a terrible wound, which he had received in a fight with the sinister enemies of the Holy Grail. He endured great
pain; yet, although the sight of the Holy Vessel could not heal his wound, at the same time it prevented him
from dying. For this was the magic power of the Holy Grail: it endowed everyone who saw it with eternal
youth. The Knights of Montsalvage were in great despair because of the illness of their King, and they eagerly
awaited the coming of Parsifal, who, as it was revealed to them, would restore the health of Amfortas and
become their new King.
When Arnfortas’ pain had become almost unbearable, and Parsifal had drawn near to the Grail Castle, the
planet Saturn had entered the constellation of Crab, and it was also in conjunction with the Sun. Thus, this story
is like a Key to the understanding of the Hour of Cancer. We can see in King Amfortas a symbol of the whole
of humanity in its present condition: facing the evil, unable to fight it through its own weaknesses, deeply
wounded, but forced to live toward a certainly painful future.
Where is Parsifal, the Bringer of Salvation? We can find other historic examples of Hours of Cancer.
Saturn was also in the constellation of Cancer in 1888 AD. This year and the following were extremely
important in the history of modern humanity, but of course, the importance of these years passed practically
unnoticed at the time. For instance, in 1888 the German philosopher Nietzsche became insane. A few years
before, he had written such books as The Will to Power, Antichrist, etc., when he was already in an unhealthy
2
condition. In these books, he tried to establish a philosophy of the “Herrenmensch” (The Master Man), who
sees the only possibility of a new advent in the midst of a declining world, in the acquisition of absolute power
by the Superman.
When Nietzsche broke down, another man was on the way to be born. This was Hitler, who was born in
April 1889. From one certain aspect, one can call him the fulfiller of Nietzsche’s philosophical dreams and
speculations. Thus he became a “successful” agent of those forces who wanted to destroy Central Europe.
Weighing these events, it is as if we looked into a deep abyss, out of which the darkest creatures of evil could
creep at any moment. Yet the slope leading into this abyss descends from the sunny heights of a dim past,
where the absolute power of the Ruler was justified by his attainment of the absolute knowledge of the great
laws of the evolution of the human race. Humanity has long ago left the level of consciousness on which such
knowledge is possible, but it has retained the external institution of the principle of absolute power in a few
hands. The continuance of this principle can only lead, with increasing speed, into an unfathomable abyss of
destruction. This is really the abyss of Cancer, which was very well-known in olden times. The traditional
symbol for this constellation reveals this knowledge. The two spiral-like signs are not connected with one
another, there is an empty space in between. Finding ourselves in the darkness of the abyss, according to the
“Hour of Cancer, can we reach the opposite slope, which may lead us again to the heights where the Light and
the Warmth dwell? It may be terribly steep and rocky, yet it must lead upward.
During another Hour of Cancer, in 1917, Rudolf Steiner, the great teacher of a new spiritual Revelation,
introduced the Idea of The Threefold Commonwealth. Nobody who experienced those years of 1917 and 1918
consciously will deny that the abyss of Cancer then yawned in a terrible manner beneath the feet of humanity.
The demons of the depth made immensely strong preparations to shatter the civilization of the West. In Russia
the Bolshevistic revolution broke loose. But also in Central Europe the first seeds were sown, out of which
grew National socialism. Yet, in the midst of that utter darkness, the light of a new dawn of humanity could be
seen, when Rudolf Steiner brought forth the idea of The Threefold Commonwealth. This idea is not a program
of a new social order. It is a great school of thinking that will finally enable humanity to overcome the specters
of power principles that are left over from past ages of human evolution.
From one side, humanity is threatened by forces that want to subdue the human being by religious
fanaticism and semi-philosophical doctrines. From another side, very powerful arrangements are made to
enslave the individual being by economic pressure. A thinking that had trained itself by the idea of The
Threefold Commonwealth would be able to overcome those dangers that arise from the one-sided over-emphasis
of one of the three great realms of social life, the economic life, the life of rights, or the spiritual life.
Thus the light has shone into the darkness of the Hour of Cancer in 1917-18. Another question is: why
didn’t humanity comprehend this light, and what are the consequences of it? We need not despair if we have
now another World Hour of Cancer to face. It will bring utter darkness, but there will also be all the more light.
Our anxiety must be in whether humanity will recognize the light. Of course, we cannot compare the present
situation with any previous time, for the world has changed its face. The problems of humanity have grown to
gigantic dimensions, partly through neglect in the past. Therefore, we might have to find new answers.
How can we find them?
3
1954
April, The Thirty - Three - Years Rhythm

(Issued by the Executive Council of
the Antroposophical Society in Great Britain)
ANTHROPOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT
For Members of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain
Vol. XXXI. No. 4 April 1954
(Issued by the Executive Council of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain.)
The Thirty-Three Years’ Rhythm

By Willi Sucher
All celestial bodies move according to certain rhythms. This has given rise to world conceptions which
regard the cosmos as rolling on like a huge machine. It is very often forgotten that all cosmic movement must
have originated in the intentions and deeds of some kind of cosmic Intelligence.
If, for instance, we speak of the revolution of a planet, we must acknowledge that this rhythmic movement
can only exist because an intelligent being of cosmic magnitude had once upon a time made that planet move in
its orbit with a definite speed. It can be considered to be an expression of that heavenly being’s intelligent
capacities. Furthermore, we can infer by merely thinking logically, that a planet’s orbit and velocity can be
changed if the Intelligence standing behind it alters its own capacity and intention. It can also happen that
another cosmic Intelligence takes over.
From Copernican astronomy we know that the Earth is moving round the Sun in the course of 365¼ days,
and we call the time interval needed for the completion of this movement “one year”. We cannot imagine that
our planet would perform this rhythm unless a cosmic Intelligence had made the Earth move in this fashion long
ago. This is as far as an astronomy that is founded on mere visual experience and a thinking derived therefrom
can go. Spiritual Science, however, can take further steps with regard to the recognition of the inspiring
Intelligences of celestial bodies; for instance, such as that of the Earth.
As a planet our Earth can be regarded as a close relative of the Sun. It is to this relationship that we should
look to find the intelligent origin of the properties of our planet: orbit, velocity, and so on. One can even say that
the Earth was founded by spiritual beings connected with the Sun.
We can well imagine that this bond between Sun and Earth will not always remain the same, but that
another setting of cosmic Intelligence might take hold of the Earth and gradually change its character,
expressible in terms of orbit, speed, etc. As a matter of fact, Spiritual Science has revealed that such a take-over
occurred, in a cosmic sense, about two thousand years ago in the course of the Events of Golgotha. The Being
of Christ, who had hitherto dwelled upon the Sun as the leading Intelligence of that creative, central focus of
our whole solar system, then united Himself with the planet Earth. We can therefore imagine that an entirely
new setting of Divine impulses and intentions combined with our planet at that time.
Such events can alter the nature of a planet even with regard to its “external” astronomical properties. Of
course, it must take a certain time until a celestial body responds to the cosmic Intelligence of its new spiritual
Guide. We should therefore expect that the Earth did not at once manifest the spiritual impulse which had
entered it in the course of the Christ Events. This will take its time, and meanwhile the Impulse will work more
strongly in the realm of Intelligence, for instance, in human intelligence and spiritual capacity. An expression of
this manifestation of the Christ-Impulse can be found as a new rhythm of time in human history and biography.
This is the 33-years’ rhythm. Among many other effects, which the Christ Impulse will have on the Earth, this
entity of time will permeate more and more the whole planet and one day in the future it may manifest itself
also in the planet’s astronomical rhythms.
The life of Christ Jesus lasted 33 years, from the birth of Jesus to the Death on Golgotha and the
Resurrection. The Nativity took place at the close of the year 1 BC. (We cannot and need not enter into here the
historical controversy concerning the year of the Nativity.) The Death on Golgotha occurred on Good Friday,
April 3, AD 33, according to the results of Spiritual research. Therefore 32⅓ years elapsed between both events.
When Jesus was born, the bodily vehicle of Christ had appeared after age-long preparations in the Spiritual
world. The Impulse had entered the crucial stage of corporeal reality. At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha,
Christ had achieved the absolute Incarnation: His union with the planet Earth. This He had done for the sake of
the continuation of its evolution and that of its inhabitants.
This historic rhythm from cosmic Initiative to the all-important and far-reaching fact of the Resurrection
was the beginning of a new cosmic rhythm. If it were established as an interval of planetary revolution under
present circumstances, it would exceed the movement of Saturn through the Zodiac. The latter takes just under
30 years to return to the same position in the fixed-star sky. This gives us an idea of the magnitude and possible
significance of the Christ Impulse for the whole solar universe. It is not only this time rhythm that will more and
more become important for the life of the Earth and its inhabitants. Each single event in the life of Christ Jesus
will impress itself on our planet and will work as creative archetype of evolution in a historical and in a
biographical sense. The pictures that are related in the gospels seem sometimes to be so very simple and without
problems. This is true to a certain extent, the Christ Impulse is very near the human heart; but besides the
simplicity, it also contains the most supreme and universal aspects of spiritual evolution.
The manifestation of the Thirty Three Years’ rhythm has already become obvious in the life of humanity.
Many historical developments and the biographies of numberless people unmistakably reveal this fact. An
impulse may enter humanity or a single human being at a certain time, and we witness that it very often takes
this impulse 33 years to find its realization, to move, as it were, from its birth to its resurrection.
It is, however, not only the initial and the ending stages of this humanity-road of 33 years that have become
the guiding pattern of evolution. The intermediate points also are of great significance. For instance, such a
humanity-impulse may be at a certain time “12 years old” and one may then notice that it goes through experi-
ences and developments which can only be compared with the story of the 12-years-old Jesus in the temple (St.
Luke II). It would be of great benefit to humanity if some attention was devoted to these facts. A situation may
be hopeless at a certain moment, but judgment on the foundation of the 33 years’ rhythm may give the
consoling assurance that a crisis at a certain moment is the unavoidable pre-condition for further progress.
The time when an impulse is 30 years old is an especially crucial point on the road to its fulfillment. In the
archetypal 33 years of Christ Jesus this was the time of Baptism, for Jesus “was about 30 years old” when he
went down to the Jordan, to the place where John the Baptist baptized (Luke III). It was the moment when the
bodily sheaths were mature enough to serve as the vehicle of the cosmic Christ, in which He dwelled for “three
years”. Rudolf Steiner has described the cosmic significance of this event for the whole future evolution of the
Earth. If spiritual impulses grow and mature according to the 33-years’ cycle, then the point of 30 years must
mean a decisive stage for them. It signifies a moment in which an impulse must prove itself to be mature
enough to be accepted by the Sun Spirit, Who united with the Earth during the events on Golgotha.
The Anthroposophical Movement is at present faced with such a situation. At Christmas 1953/4 it was 30
years since Rudolf Steiner had given it a new impulse during the “Christmas Foundation Meeting” in 1923/4.
This impulse put a picture of worldwide significance before the earnestly seeking anthroposophist as the content
of meditation and exercise: the vision of the Three Holy Kings working in the head organization of the human
being, of the Shepherds in the heart of the human being, moving towards union in their common aim, seeking
the birth of the Eternal Spirit of Christ in the human soul. Here are the roots of all real spiritual “Imitation of
Christ”, the transformation into reality of soul of that which once stood before the Child Jesus as the historic
figures of Kings and Shepherds.
This impulse has since gone through a different life, full of disappointments. Some people may even be
inclined to think that it “died” at certain stages of its career. However, we are convinced that those “deaths”
were necessary preconditions for its later evolution. An impulse can never die if it is a true spiritual impulse. It
can go through a temporary eclipse, but it will “resurrect” sooner or later.
The Spirit Deed of the “Christmas Foundation” entered its crucial stage of the “Three Years” during last
Christmas. From now on it can become effective in a special sense in every human soul. The co-operative
spiritual union of the streams of “Kings” and “Shepherds” will become possible to such an extent that the inner
purpose of the Christ-permeated Earth in the universe will reveal itself to all souls of good will.
The impulse will move toward its own Golgotha and Resurrection. No being on Earth will be able to stop it.
But it would be a vain hope if we expected things to happen in any case. The impulse can only “resurrect” in the
soul of those who partake in the original institution by relentless efforts of meditation and exercise. It will not
happen “of its own accord”. Thus the responsibility rests with each single pupil of Rudolf Steiner.
2
1957
June, Bio-Dynamic Agricultural Association

Astronomical Note VI
BIO-DYNAMIC AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION

June 1957 - No. 8
Astronomical Notes VI
Willi Sucher
Even a superficial glance at our monthly calendar sheet must make it abundantly clear that one of the
paramount features of the events in the sky is the positions at a given time of Moon, Sun, and the planets in the
constellations of the Zodiac. We shall, therefore, spend some time over working out of the main characteristics
of these constellations.
It must, however, be emphasized that the impacts of the constellations are modified according to the
properties and characteristics of the celestial bodies which happen to move through them. Therefore, we will
come to the fact that in the end the Zodiac presents seven aspects of which one may even contradict the other.
This is not much consolation for the practical farmer and gardener, but we are surely aware that any half-
measure would lead only to dilettantism. We are working not only for monetary needs, but we have a
responsibility for coming ages that will demand a sure and scientific foundation for considering the cooperation
between cosmic and earthly forces. No words are more true than those expressed by Mr. Corrin in the last issue
of the News Letter. We are pioneers in a new field of experience which needs the constant vigilance of revising
and checking.
What are the tools, then, that we must employ to realize the impacts of the constellations of the Zodiac?
Certainly, we have the possibility of checking by the facts which we perceive in nature; yet, although this road
must never be neglected, it is a very tedious and long one. Another instrument of research is ourselves. We can
study the connections of the stars with our bodily nature, during our embryonic development, etc. This is a
somewhat shorter road, although it is more complicated. Rudolf Steiner, himself, has repeatedly pointed out that
we are the best instrument for astronomical observation—better than the telescopes and other mechanical
means. Thereby, we can gain an insight into the manifestations of the Zodiac and planets on Earth; although we
have to translate, as it were, these observations into terms that conform to conditions in the kingdoms of nature.
This was one of the reasons why in ancient times the names of Saints and other important personages were
added to the days of the calendar. We cannot simply copy this in our present age. Our approach must be
different, because Saints do no have the same meaning anymore in modern civilization.
Since the most ancient times, the twelve constellations of the Zodiac were recognized as the visible
expressions of the cosmic, spiritual form of the human being. In Genesis I we hear: “And so God created man
in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” The external manifestation of the “Image of God” are
the fixed stars, that mysterious world in cosmic space about which we know so little, particularly the twelve
constellations of the Zodiac.
How can we recognize in that world our divine archetypal from? In ancient tradition there is abundant
evidence of how it was perceived; of course, the means of perceiving this was entirely different from modern
approaches. But we can safely say that our modern researches in this matter have amplified and transcribed
these cosmic facts into modern concepts.
Our physical organization is twelvefold. (A closer scientific research can disclose even subdivisions of the
twelve.) The foundation, but not the most important part, is the head, as also embryology reveals. It is followed
by the region of hearing and self-expression through speech, centered in the larynx. The word must become the
deed. For that reason the human organization has developed the arms which, together with the shoulders, form
the third region.
The fourth bodily region provides us with the facility of experiencing our own individual nature. It is the
chest, which encloses a part of the inner organs and separates us from the external world. Through our inner
organs we experience our being as an integrated entity apart from our surroundings—this forms the fifth region.
The emancipation is still more emphasized by the sphere below the diaphragm, and it constitutes the sixth
region where those mysterious encounters take place between the impacts of the external world through food
and an entirely different inner potentiality.
The seventh region is formed by the hips, the pelvis, etc. It is a sphere of balance and support for the upper
organism. Following it is the region of propagation, which is the eight region. A redirection of human affinity
to the external world sets in with it, which is further emphasized by the organization of the upper legs or thighs,
constituting the ninth region. Furthermore, flexibility is now introduced into our bodily capacity , so we come
into close relationship to the external world by the movement of our limbs. This is done by the knees, or the
tenth region, but all joints of the human skeleton serve a similar purpose. The flexibility is then used by the
functions of the lower legs, or eleventh region, which have still more affinity to the external world, for instance,
to external warmth. Finally, we find in the human body the feet, the twelfth sphere, which directly touches the
soil, the foundation of external nature.
This division of the human organization was always known and was experienced as the earthly reflection of
the age-long impacts of the twelve constellations of the Zodiac on our planet. Modern spiritual science can
confirm this connection, which is in fact, the realization of our origin in the “image of God”, represented in its
external manifestation as the Zodiac.
Our connection with the Zodiac is then as follows:
Region of the: Constellation of: Sign of:

Head Ram Aries
Speech, larynx Bull Taurus
Arms, shoulders Twins Gemini
Chest Crab Cancer
Interior of chest Lion Leo
Interior below diaphragm Virgin Virgo
Balance Scales Libra
Propagation Scorpion Scorpio
Thighs Archer Sagittarius
Knees Goat Capricorn
Calves Waterman Aquarius
Feet Fishes Pisces
This divine image or “archetype” of the human being is inherent in all kingdoms of nature, partly, of course,
in highly modified manifestations. However, if we understand the impact of the Zodiac on the human being, we
can also learn to comprehend the influence of the Zodiac on nature in connection with the activities of the
planets.
2
1981
Autumn, Review of Dr. Vreede

ASTRONOMIE UND ANTHROPOSOPHIE by Dr. Elisabeth Vreede

Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, Domach, 1980.
From: Anthroposophical Newsletter, Autumn 1981
Review of Dr. Elisabeth Vreede by Willi Sucher, Meadow Vista, CA
The hardened remnants of newspaper astrology cry out for a nourishing and renewing content. The fruits of
such a revitalizing impulse are amply offered in Dr. Vreede’s work on Astronomy and Anthroposophy. Long
out of print, we can all—those who read German—be grateful for the revised edition of an earlier (1954)
publication of this comprehensive work. The book contains thirty-seven chapters which originally formed the
content of a regular publication, the Rundbrief (Newsletter).
Many years of intensive study and work have shown this work to be of great significance. It reminds us
strongly of Rudolf Steiner’s remarks in a lecture on October 10, 1919: “Of the forces that are bringing about
the decline of our civilization, the first is the lack of a Cosmogony.” (The other two are lack of Freedom and
lack of true Altruism.) He explains Cosmogony as an element which should be developed especially in Western
(i.e., English and American) humanity.
Elisabeth Vreede, appointed by Steiner to head the Mathematical-Astronomical Section at the Goetheanum,
offers in great detail most aspects of modern astronomy and indicates how they can be understood and worked
with in a positive way through Rudolf Steiner’s Science of the Spirit. There is hardly a field of modem
astronomical knowledge which is not investigated.
In addition to the astronomical perspectives, Dr. Vreede presents positive approaches to a new astrology.
According to traditional astrology, we are for the most part seen as a helpless product of the universe of stars.
The new astrology indicates that we can develop our inner, spiritual potential to the point where we will be able
to become a cooperating member of the starry universe.
Dr. Vreede describes how this has become possible since the Christ event. Christ introduced into humanity
the beginnings of a slow but certain maturing of the human being so that we will be able to receive the impact
of the stars for creative and even, eventually, healing activities. From this we can understand Steiner’s warning
remark, “If the connection of the Earth with the extra-terrestrial world is not comprehended again in a spiritual
sense, the Mystery of Golgotha cannot live on into the future.”
Some of the most significant perspectives in Dr. Vreede’s book are in the chapters concerning the soul’s
connection with the world of the stars at the moment of death and during the following stages of passing
through the spheres of the cosmos. Life after death has become in modern humanity a meaningless perspective.
Rudolf Steiner, however, has opened the gates to a new, positive understanding of existence and the movement
of the human soul through the spheres of the planets and beyond, after its departure from the Earth. On the basis
of Steiner’s indications, it was possible to work out concrete details of these post-death experiences. Dr. Vreede
describes in her book the foundations of this insight, and in later years they form the groundwork for the
beginnings of astrosophy, for a star wisdom that no longer needs rely on astrological tradition.
The book includes chapters on the daily movement in the celestial sphere, the threefold sun, astrology in
light of the arts, the future of astrology, the horoscope, comets, shooting stars and meteorites, the spiritual
essence of the stars, and Copernicus, Kepler, and their systems. Dr. Vreede’s work can indeed be experienced as
a gateway to an active and creative wisdom of the stars which we will need increasingly to bring a renewed,
creative perspective into our existence within the cosmos.
ABOUT ASTROSOPHY
Astrosophy is a new star wisdom, (Greek - astro = star;
philosophy = wisdom), developed by Willi Sucher from the
1920s until his death in 1985. He was inspired and informed by
the knowledge of Rudolf Steiner.
https://www.astrosophy.com/
This site is dedicated to the further development and
dissemination of his basic work which in pdf. available for free.
Isis Sofia I & II from 1985 are the only Dutch translations of
his work. On this website of Jonathan Hilton, the translation of
all books, lectures and letters will be started, these can be found
in pdf, under 'Willi Sucher Publications'.
On the site you can also watch the 'online courses' of Jonathan
Hilton about the work of Willi Sucher, now with subtitles in
several languages.
Jonathan Hilton has served as president
of the New York City Branch Council
of the Anthroposophical Society in
America. He has worked with
anthroposophy in various ways for over
40 years. His work includes a new
approach to star wisdom, stemming
from anthroposophy, as developed by
Willi Sucher, with a particular focus on
the cycle of the year as a path to the
new solar mysteries.

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These collected articles by Willi Sucher are arranged as they appear on the website

The articles by Willi Sucher collected below are arranged

Justification for other imagery;

This compilation was produced by Libra

Constellation of Cosmic Thought

Delayed Action Dynamics

The Constellation of Cosmic Thought - Spiritual Nativity

DELAYED ACTION DYNAMICS BETWEEN COSMOS AND EARTH

Other interesting sequences of delayed effect of this nature were:

28 December 1908 : Earthquake of Messina

27 August 1883: Eruption of Krakatoa

1 November 1755: Earthquake of Lisbon

Other coincidences of a similar kind from a collection of data were:

minus 75 days = May 26–June 1 28 May: Mercury opp. Pluto (c.151.5°)

Towards New Culture Publications

Juli, Astrology I - Prenatal Astrology

ASTROLOGY I - PRENATAL ASTROLOGY

The Modern Mystic and Science Review

The Modern Mystic and Science Review

January, The Gateway of the moon(continued)

Thus we have three distinct periods of philosophic development in Nietzsche's life:

The Modern Mystic and Science Review

The Modern Mystic and Science Review

The Modern Mystic and Science Review

Darwin and Haeckel

The Modern Mystic and Science Review

Fig. 1: St. Thomas Aquinas - Horoscope of Death - 6 March, 1274

Fig. 3 Horoscope of Death - Meister Eckhardt, 1327

The Modern Mystic and Science Review

Aries: Spiritual impulses are poured into evolution.

The Modern Mystic and Science Review

Fig. 2 MICHELANGELO - (Inner Circle) Horoscope of Birth, 6 March 1475

Fig. 3 NOVALIS - (Inner Circle) Horoscope of Birth, 2 May, 1772

Fig. 4: LEO TOLSTOI - (Inner Circle) Prenatal Horoscope, 9 Dec., 1828

The Modern Mystic and Science Review

The Modern Mystic and Science Review

April, Renewal of Culture?

May/June, Time Signals from the Universe C R C - D I A R Y,

Time Signals from the Universe

April, The Thirty - Three - Years Rhythm

The Thirty-Three Years’ Rhythm

June, Bio-Dynamic Agricultural Association

BIO-DYNAMIC AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION

Region of the: Constellation of: Sign of:

Autumn, Review of Dr. Vreede

ASTRONOMIE UND ANTHROPOSOPHIE by Dr. Elisabeth Vreede

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