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The Testament of Astrology - © 2002, All Rights Reserved

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The Testament of Astrology

Introduction to Astrology as an Esoteric Science

Third Sequence, Part One:The World of the Planets and Man

Ten Esoteric Lectures by

Dr. Oskar Adler

June 4, 1875 – May 15, 1955



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The Testament of Astrology

Introduction to Astrology as an Esoteric ScienceThird Sequence, Part One: The World of the Planets and Man

First Electronic Edition, 2002

Copyright © 2002, Amy ShapiroAll Rights Reserved

ISBN: Pending

Produced in the United States of America byONLINE College of AstrologyE-Publishing DivisionP.O. Box 85Basye, Virginia 22810http://www.astrocollege.org/

Translated from original German by Zdenka Orenstein

Desktop publishing production and illustrations by Tuxedo Cat Enterprises,Las Vegas, NV

Copyediting by Amy Shapiro




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Table of Contents

First Lecture .............................................................................. 6The Experience of World Rhythm as Messenger between Time and Eternity

The Women of Radak

The Planets as Mediators between Zodiac and Man

Planetary Clockwork and Cosmic Building Plan

The Pythagorean Triangle and Music of the Spheres

The Doctrine of the Music of the Spheres from Pythagoras to Schopenhauer

Second Lecture ......................................................................... 22

World-Memory

Between Non-being and Being

Overtones of God’s Word

The Numbers 3, 7 and 12

The Curtain before the Inner Sanctum

Caduceus and Rosicrucian Cosmogony

Geo-centric and Helio-centric Viewpoints

Polarity and Sexuality in the World of the Planets and in Music

Zodiac-places of the Planets, their Dignities and Weaknesses

Exaltation of the Sun and MoonThird Lecture ........................................................................... 41

Planets and Cosmic Sense-organs

1 =3 =1

Polarity and Relativity

Definition of the Functions of the Seven Holy Planets

The Phoenix-bird

Fourth Lecture .......................................................................... 60

The Teachings of Ptolemy

The Planetary Symbols

Essence and Value of the Symbols

Man’s Wandering through Time

The Planetary Experience as Gradation Experience

For here We have no Continuing City




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Fifth Lecture ............................................................................ 76

The Individual in the Concert of the StarsSun and Moon as Representatives of the Two Poles of the Self

Conception and Birth

New-Moon- and Full-Moon-man

Solar and Lunar Eclipses

Maja --- Maria

Sixth Lecture ............................................................................ 94

The Moon Phases

The 24 Quarter-Moon Positions and their Importance

The Burden of the Cross

Seventh Lecture .......................................................................111

Moon in the 3 Fire-signs in relation to the Sun

Eighth Lecture ......................................................................... 127

Moon in the 3 Air-signs in relation to the Sun

Ninth Lecture .......................................................................... 143

Moon in the 3 Water-signs in relation to the Sun

Tenth Lecture .......................................................................... 157

Moon in the 3 Earth-signs in relation to the SunAppendix................................................................................. 171




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First Lecture

We all must completeOur lives’ cycles

According toEternal, iron,Gigantic laws.

~ Goethe

Our observations of Zodiac and Man (Introduction to Astrology as Esoteric Wisdom,Second Sequence: Zodiac and Man) have acquainted us with the eternal idea of man, of which each individual man represents merely a transitory, dim image.

In the Zodiac lies the eternal idea of man, the eternal, transmundane source, whencemillions of human beings in the course of time enter life together or successively. In thefar distance of the fixed stars, the Zodiac represents the fixed, eternal background tohumanity’s existence. Individual man, fallen from that idea into temporality, obeys the

faster rhythms of a world “closer” to us, which receives its laws of time and measure fromthe turning, circling, and oscillating planets wandering around our Sun.

Eternity and temporality meet each other in individual man, and unite within him as hisheavenly and earthly legacy, to be disjoined again after a short time.

What divides gods from men? Many waves flow before those, An eternal stream:

We are lifted by the wave, swallowed by the wave, And we sink down.

~ Goethe, “Limits of Mankind”

It is just this lifting and sinking----the rhythm of life, which, in prehistoric times, was tobecome the starting point of world-experience per se, the every-ready witness of the all-relatedness of human life experienced in the soul’s deepest depths. Was not the rhythm of breathing and heartbeat a miniature scion of what presented itself in ever mightier measuresin the sky, in the orbits of Sun and stars? And must it not necessarily enter the vital feelingof man, albeit merely as a dark premonition, that the planets, from fast Moon to slow




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Saturn, performing their precise dance on the immovable background of the fixed-star-sky,present a strangely ordered chain of supermundane messengers, bringing to earthly mantidings of eternal life, as divine mediators between time and eternity?

Allow me to begin this sequence with a truly esoteric experience, whose external “ritual,” if

I may call it so, has been transmitted to us in an especially primitive but very impressiveform by Chamisso. As one fruit of his “Travel around the World,” he brought home withhim a primitive poem, which he heard recited by the women of Radak (an island groupin the western Pacific), while they performed a peculiar dance, swimming and diving inthe ocean:

Dive in the sea, Emerge from the sea,Six times …

The verses were repeated six times, accompanied by respective movements; whereafter at

the conclusion of this unusual dance, they exclaim:

Seven times!

Chamisso adds no commentary to this report. We see here before us obviously the remnantof a religious ceremony, as the cosmic figures of six and seven (Sabbath) seem to prove.

We can easily discern how this ceremony may have originated. Daily those islanders see theSun and the stars sink into the ocean and rise again from it. The dance they perform isprobably a religious ceremony whose definite ritual aims at their joining in the harmony of the cosmic rhythm. But this “joining” has a far deeper meaning than we notice at first. Itmeans no more nor less than the immediate experience of the one great world-breath inwhich we are all included. We emerge from the sea and dive into the sea.

If we could see the cosmic cycle of the movements of the stars in a highly acceleratedpace-----the Planetarium, manufactured with such art and precision by Zeiss of Jena, maygive us a slight idea of this-----then we would actually become witnesses of the roundelaydance of the stars: we would see theuniverse dance, swinging up and down, as the bodiesof the woman from the island of Radak, in the ocean.

But! We would still see more than the planetarium shows us. Amid the general rhythmic

dance of the worlds we would see man in his life-dance, as he rises from his bed in themorning and sinks down on it in the evening, rise and sink down... we would see him beingborn, grow, and sink into his grave; we would see Earth in rapid change of light anddarkness; in the pulse-beat of our own heart we would experience the arch livingmetronome of all events, and with it our vital inclusion in this immense, breathingworld-edifice, incessantly pulsating like our heart.

May nobody believe that this vision merely exists in our imagination! It lives directly in




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every one of us and is nothing other than what we call memory.

Memory possesses the ability to compress immense periods of time into one short moment.The esoteric experience of the dance of world events grows out of this strength of memory,passing through the times guided by rhythm; out of it grows the astrological world picture of

the function of the planets as time-indicators of all earthly laws.

It is a special form of memory which confronts us here. As repetition of the sameness inthought, stifling the unique and unrepeatable, it appears like the vitalized conscience of world-rhythm itself, of which it has become a diminished image-----as the picture in our eyehas become the diminished image of the “outside”.

We will take this memory-function of man’s consciousness, through which he possesseshimself of world-rhythm, as a starting point for our reflections about the world of the planetsand man. In it we will see a bridge of similar importance to that which the human bodypresented between the “Self” and the cosmos (See General Foundation, First Lecture).

Let us remember that we are already acquainted with two such bridges, showing thesolitary ego the road to the “outside,” as mediators: the human body as material bridge,and numbers as intellectual bridge, between which sorrow and pain stood as emotionalexperience-color or as emotional coefficient of unity: the function of memory as a reproducingpower, born out of the cosmic rhythm and as one with it, lets us also perceive a physical,an emotional and an intellectual side. Their essence will be revealed to us by the functionsof the planets.

As the inventive mind of man sought to capture the rhythm of the planetary movement inthe technical miracle of the “clock”, thus providing a

physical resonance-board, so the living

human body is a sort of organic clock, in whose mechanism an unknown moving powerkeeps up the rhythm of pulse, breathing, circulation of the fluids, alternation of life assur-ances, of wakefulness and sleep, of food intake and secretion of the residues.

But this clockwork of the human living body, in which the world-memory of the subcon-scious thus proves itself, also reveals a logical side, since these periodical cycles of physicallife obey a numerical law, which has its model in the planetary movements. These numbers andtheir mathematical relations-----obeying this numerical law-----now take on the form of valuesof experience. In their rhythm, similar to ebb and flow, they are like search and loss, andrenewed search for the lost, renewed bereavement and renewed recovery-----in short, they

are like the circular road of all human endeavor. We can discover its periodical recurrencein the life of individual man as well as in the historical course of mankind’s development. A

perfect clock would self-correct, without outside help, by a system of built-in safeguards andregulators, which may be steered by the course of the world itself. Such a regulator isactually built into the human organism, which is revealed in the soul as pain and sorrowwhen the clock needs repair, when it is about to be slow or fast. Again it is the function of the planets which is assigned to steer the course into his time, into which he came frometernity to Earth.




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Herewith we arrive at the true nucleus of the task served by this part of our course. If wecould draw the basic astrological elements of humanism in general in the Second Sequence(Zodiac and Man), we now must discover those basic elements responsible for the fact that

single man, with his special characteristics as an individual, appears on this background of the generally human; the individual is correlated to that background as the individual isrelated to the general, or the concrete to the so-called abstract.

Here a very important remark is necessary to prevent a disastrous misunderstanding.

To exoteric formal, logical thinking, it seems natural to accept as true and ultimatelyattainable reality, the single thing, the “concrete,” while the comprehensive “abstract” appears to it merely a thinking-tool, which has been introduced into thinking practice forthe purpose of economizing the mental armory, and that becomes more unreal as itsboundaries widen (as, for instance, the school of the “nominalists” taught, which saw in

every abstract concept nothing but “names” without reality).

Esoteric thinking distinguishes very sharply between such artificial or collective conceptsand the supermaterial ideas: from these perceptual sources, outlasting all concrete materializa-tions, stem the less perfect single representatives which appear as impure copies of anoriginal. They would remain invisible without this tarnishing in matter.

The general idea of man, being stamped in matter, thereby undergoes that tarnishing whichmakes the individual visible to our earthly view, as a shadow-picture on the projection-screen of Earth; concrete, mortal man, after he has been fetched down, as through theoperation of a miraculous machine, from the immense distance of the fixed stars, frometernity into temporality.

This miraculous machine, to which is given the ability to transpose the idea of man frometernity into temporality, from the general into the special... this miraculous machine, throughwhich first of all time emerges from the womb of eternity, is the rhythm of oscillation per se;for us people of Earth, the oscillation of the planets, the planetary world.

We have already spoken of this fact in the first two sequences of this course, although inanother sense. In the General Foundation we spoke of the planets as sort of transformersor detectors, appointed to translate the otherwise unintelligible language of the Zodiac

radiation into earthly language; the planetary world thus became a sort of intermediateworld, or a mediator between the divine and the terrestrial part of the human being.The drawing presented in the General Foundation shall be repeated here, to help usremember this (see Figure1 on next page).




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Figure 1

As we dealt with the soil of man’s heavenly roots in the Second Sequence, now we shall turnour attention to the “trunk” of the human tree, or the miracle machine of his terrestrialprojection picture. In the sap of this trunk pulsates the rhythm of eternal life.

What then does this apparatus contribute to the creation of the concrete human form,according to the constellation at his birth? This machine, which prepares the special mixture

of the maternal sap for individual man in ever varied form? What is each separate planet’sshare in the total result of this mixture, according to its special filtration power and itsmomentary phase of movement, which associates it once to this and then to another part of the Zodiac as its filter? To which composite sound are the thus-generated radiations of theplanets joined, bidding the human being, called to life on Earth, to fulfill his life’s task likeasounding name? Calls, based on the “eternal, iron, great law!” Each person, born here, thusbecomes a resonator for a cosmic wave, whose cosmic sound becomes the proper nameconferred to him by the cosmos for the duration of his temporary existence.

All transposition from eternity into transitoriness all that takes place and the forming of all

reality in the concrete, moves on such a wave. The horoscope informs you of this wave,which carried you from eternity into time, according to its law.

But as we surrender to such thoughts, we are seized by a strange feeling. What, if what wehave called “time” up to now in the sense of an entirely empty concept, should be morethan mere form of the “inner vision,” as Kant termed it? If the complete determination of each moment of time through the oscillation phase of the cosmic wave were nothing butthe reality-potential of this phase? Then the total condition of the cosmic oscillation event




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would become the index for the comprehension-----let us not be afraid of this word-----forthe comprehension of the quality of time of the constantly changing quality of now nomore empty time, that quality which impresses its color on all that is comprised in it frometernity, so that only that can become a real event, which is able to absorb this specific color of the moment.

Therefore, what will occur at its time, only tomorrow, cannot be realized today, and eventhat, only according to its wave. Old wisdom seems to present itself thus in a new garb.

To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven: A timeto be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and to gather that which is planted;a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up;a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a timeto cast away stones and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to gain and a time to lose; a time tokeep and a time to cast away; a time to rend and a time to sew; a time to keep

silence and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace...

~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Let us make clear what we have perceived so far. Each human individual represents atransitory emanation, projected into time, of the pure, eternal, timeless idea of man. There-fore he is necessarily only an imperfect, dimmed image of this idea. Dimness andtransitoriness are inseparably interdependent. The peculiarity of this dimness decides thesingularity of the human individual. Its measure is a law of time, which is signified by theposition of the hands of the planetary clockwork.

Our next task is to get acquainted with this clockwork of the planets by exploring itsrelation to the eternal-human.

Having offered a contribution to the lore of mankind and an outline of human nature ingeneral in the preceding sequence “Zodiac and Man,” by interpreting the twelve regions of the Zodiac, we are now no longer concerned about this general perception of man. Now weare interested in the study of the cosmic basis for a perception of man, which is related tothat general lore of mankind as “Individual psychology” is to general psychology.

Therefore, our efforts must be aimed at finding the special law, within the generality of

human nature, responsible for the peculiarity of the formation of the individual, accordingto the time of his birth, by reading from the hands of the planetary clock the nuance in thecolor-scale of his purity-dimming.

Thus our task attains sharper outlines: it becomes the study of the working wheels of theplanetary clockwork. We plunge deeper into its laws. We follow with reverence the tracks of the Universal-Mind. It is this Universal-Mind which created the planetary clockwork withinthe human mind and power of perception. We follow with courage instilled in us by the




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belief that man is a small part of this living clockwork himself, in which the laws of theuniverse are also contained. We sense it in the depths of our Self, as was explained in thefirst two lectures of the General Foundation.

So we will now start this exploration, trying to view at first the outside of this clockwork in

a purely exoteric sense.

The Sun, a fixed star among millions of others, is surrounded by a number of small worldscircling it, of which at least one-----our Earth-----carries on its surface, on its firm crust, in itsoceans and streams, in the air around it, an abundance of living beings, plants, animalsand “talking” men-----that is the exterior picture this Sun-cosmos offers to us (compare theintroduction to Schopenhauer’s “The World as Will and Imagination”).

But since ancient times, in that period when Earth was still considered the spatial center of the Sun-cosmos, it was observed that the planetary orbits occurred in certain numericalrelations to each other, behind which a law must be operating as the basic cause, which

seemed to rule the entire creative plan of the universe. Probably it will be no mistaketo assume that the wisdom of the priests in antiquity knew such laws, whose secretsignificance is perhaps most clearly revealed in the famous theorem of Pythagoras.

This theorem, expressing that the three sides of a rectangular triangle are related to eachother in such a manner that the square above the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squaresabove the two sides, can be termed the basis for all geometrical measuring definitions.

Another measuring definition is yet revealed in it, which adds a definition of value to themere measurement of length, confronting us directly with the esoteric experience of thismeasure-relationship.

Observing the simplest Pythagorean triangle, that is a right-angled triangle whose side-lengthscan be expressed in whole numbers, we find the lengths of the sides standing to each otherin a relationship of 3:4:5. In this very same relationship stand the three tones of the triad inmusic, which is in its part the basis for all tonal relations in music, as the Pythagoreantriangle is the starting point for all geometric definition of measure.

Considering the measurements of the three sides of the Pythagorean triangle as the lengthsof cords, we find as their consonance the minor triad; considering them as oscillationnumbers we find the major triad.

By comparison of the period of the planets’ revolution around the Sun, and later bycomparing the measurements of their distances from the Sun, and of the speed of theirmovements, numbers were found, which in their relationships mirrored the laws of musical harmony.




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Figure 2

As by developing the Pythagorean triangle in the way of the above drawing, all otherrelations of musical intervals can be found, so we perceive through development of asimple numerical law in the course of the planetary movements the expression of anenormousworld music of which the earthly music represents only a fragment placed intothe small, human-----as the beating heart represents a fragment of the world-rhythm. Wewill now attempt to give a rough picture of the various forms which this side of the greatworld harmony (whose greatest interpreter was Johannes Kepler) has taken in the courseof time.

For this purpose we will first present a short summary of the measurements of our solarsystem:

________________________________________________________________________1 These figures were accurate when Dr. Adler taught in the 1930s. Refer to any modern astronomy book for updated

figures.




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Antiquity, whose official astrology placed Earth first of all spatially in the center of theuniverse, and thus took the later so-called geocentric point of view (whose main represen-tative is supposed to be Ptolemy)-----antiquity thus stood in a certain opposition to theCopernican system valid today, which places the Sun in the center of the planetary world(a heliocentric point of view). But, in spite of this contrast, both these notions have a

common measure of time. This is derived from the rotation of the Earth around itself; it isa legacy from ancient astronomy which could be accepted by modern astronomy as basicmeasure for all definitions of time, undiminished.

Perhaps we can understand the relationship between geocentric and heliocentric astronomyin this way: that our modern astronomy is geocentric with regard to time and heliocentricwith regard to space, while this heliocentric viewpoint is valid only for our planetarysystem, and is dissolved into uncertainty in relation to the fixed-star sky. Since the contentof all esoteric planetary experience is the function of time and its rhythmic measure, thegeocentric viewpoint remains even today the viewpoint of esoteric astrology, and manwith his beating heart the point of Archimedes’ world-experience. [Translator’s note:

Archimedes said: “Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.”]

This explains that the people of antiquity must have come to a theory concerning theplanets, whose ordering principle was the times of movement of the separate members of their system. It began with the Moon as the fastest and ended with Saturn as the slowest of the planets then known. The order thus created was: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars,Jupiter, and Saturn. In the heliocentric system, the spatial relations-----the distances of theplanets to the Sun-----became the decisive ordering principle. The new grouping, from theplanet closest to the Sun to that farthest in distance from the Sun, was therefore: Mercury,Venus, Earth with Moon, Mars, the asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn and further on, the planetsdiscovered only in recent times: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

Common to all times was the search for the law upon which the cosmic relations, temporalas well as spatial, were built, thus to warrant the great unity of the universe.

We will now try to give a short summary of the separate historical phases of this search forthe numerical key to the building plan of the world of the planets.

As the ancestor of all such endeavors, we must again name Pythagoras. The fact that therelations of the elementary numbers3 : 4 : 5 were the measurements of the Pythagoreantriangle as well as those of all musical harmony, leads us to seek the origin of this

concurrence in a numerical harmony in the universe, whose internally experiencedreflection was the mental structure of mathematics and its validity in space, as well asthe musical edifice of sounds in time. Thus evolved the doctrine of theharmony of thespheres, which saw the Pythagorean numbers and their internal logical equivalent workingeverywhere to build the universe, whose harmony was revealed in heaven as the concordof the seven planetary potencies, each of whom added its special sound to the greatworld-music, corresponding to the seven tones of the diatonic scale of earthly music(See General Foundation, Fifth Lecture).




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The numerical laws which determine the interval-relations of earthly music therefore form asort of mirror of the laws governing the celestial music; he who could listen to it would beinitiated in their secret!

Therefore, geometry (measurement in space) and music (number experienced in time) areclosely related.

Nobody who knew not mathematics and music was permitted to enter the temple of Pythagorean teachings.

About 2000 years later the world was given the intellectual heir of Pythagoras, Kepler -----hischosen pupil.

Faith in the divine order of the universe enlightened the road of his intuition. He toobecame a seeker for a blueprint of the world, as the titles of his two main works reveal:

“Secrets of Creation in the Depths of the World” and “Harmonies of the World.” He toomeditated upon the secrets of Pythagorean numbers, which he rediscovered accuratelyas the musical building stones that fix the measurements of the planetary functions.Velocities and periods of rotation of the planets stand in musical relationship to oneanother, which he calculates according to their exact tone- and interval-relationships;deviations and renewed harmonizations change, as they do in earthly music. Finally heeven calculates the arch-harmony of the first day of creation, the total-tonality of theworld , which only the pure spirit envisions:

The incomprehensibly exalted works

Are glorious----- as on the first day!~ Goethe, Faust

If rotational periods and velocities are subject to harmonic law, then so too must be themeasurements in space!

In what numerical relations do the rotation periods, velocity, and distance stand toeach other?

Here Kepler’s intuition, inspired by Pythagoras, bestowed a present upon mankind,worthy to be placed side by side with Pythagoras’ theorem-----Pythagoras, of whom the

oracle of Delphi prophesied to his parents that they were destined to have a son whowas going to present a lofty gift to all mankind. Just as exalted a present to mankind arethe three laws of Kepler, the esoteric side of which we will study later. In the third of these theorems, the above-mentioned association has been thus formulated:

The squares of the rotation periods of the planets are related to each other as the cubes of their median distance from the Sun. But Kepler sought beyond these numerals for ablueprint of the world structure, which so-to-speak defined the limits within which its




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possibilities take effect.

The model of the perfection which gives itself its own limits is the fact that only five regularsymmetrical bodies are possible; that is, bodies which are built symmetrically in the threedimensions of space, with one common center. These five regular bodies, whose surface is

built in regular level faces, are only bound by equilateral triangles, squares, or pentagons,corresponding to the digits 3, 4 and 5. Four-faced bodies (tetrahedron), eight-faced bodies(octahedron), and twenty-faced bodies (dodecahedron) show triangles as parts of theirsurface; the six-plane body (cube and hexahedron) squares, and twelve-faced body-----pentagons.

Kepler placed these five bodies inside each other in such a manner that the spherescircumscribed or inscribed in them actually revealed in the relationship between theirradii, the corresponding relationships of the radii of the planetary orbits.

At the outside is the cube; then follow:

TetrahedronDodecahedronIcosahedron

and finally, Octahedron

Along the sphere circumscribing the cube orbits Saturn; along that inscribed in the cube,Jupiter; into this sphere Kepler then placed the tetrahedron; the sphere inscribed in itcarried the orbit of Mars on its surface. Into this third or Mars-sphere, Kepler placed thedodecahedron, whose inscribed sphere carried the orbit of the Earth, while the orbit of Venus lay on the surface of the sphere inscribed into the icosahedron, which is inserted inthe sphere of the Earth orbit. Finally the octahedron, which is inserted in the sphere of theVenus orbit, had Mercury circling along its inside.

It would lead us too far to enter more deeply into this construction plan of Kepler’s butit shall not be concealed that Kepler, based on this audacious blueprint, arrived at thebold conclusion that between Jupiter and Mars must exist an unknown planet: INTRAJOVEM ET MARTEM POSUI PLANETUM: Between Jupiter and Mars I put a planet.About 170 years later the so-called planetoids were found in the corresponding place.

The idea of the sounding of the basic interval in the planetary system was taken up withspecial mathematical exactitude by the Viennese scholar Dr. Ernst Müller in an essay:

“Harmony of the Planetary System.” This paper is especially interesting because theidea of time is revealed in it with great clarity. Müller calculates the times when eachindividual planet, as seen from Earth, stands in one line with the Sun (as, for instance,the two hands of a clock), and he places the time values thus obtained into numericalrelationship to each other.

There is found between:




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Mercury and Venus a pure third relationship 1 : 5

Mercury and Mars a pure quint relationship 2 : 3

Mars and Jupiter a pure octave relationship 1 : 2

So that now the following order results:

Mercury : Mars : Jupiter : Venus=2 : 3 : 6 : 10.

About one hundred years after Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravita-tion, which traced back to a single active cause, namely the “general attraction of themasses,” Kepler’s laws of the distinct relations between rotation periods and distancesfrom the Sun. This gravitation law further demonstrated the compelling proof that theorbits of the planets must actually be ellipses, in one of whose foci stands the Sun (FirstLaw of Kepler). While Newton had thus given the physical perception basis for theuniformity of the planetary movements, so, again about100 years later, Immanuel Kant

completed the picture of the inner cohesion of the world structure by his dogma of thecommon origin of our solar system, and its development from the arch-state of a cosmicrotating nebula, whose gradual condensation produced in the end the present state of a number of planets circling around the Sun as their center, which are altogetherseparated parts of one originally united mass, still faithfully attached to the Sun astheir common mother.

The original nebulae-mass, which extended beyond the orbit of the farthest planet (atthat time, Saturn), eventually being condensed, left behind-----seemingly residues in theevolution-way of its progressive condensation-----in the relative utmost limits of its con-tinuously condensed body, one by one, the single planets, which show (as the degreeof their distances from the Sun diminish) a steadily growing density. (This is onlyapproximately valid). This ejection of the separate condensed parts of the Sun naturallytook place in the area of the central body’s equator, since the centrifugal forces havetheir greatest power there. All planets, therefore, circle not only in the same direction,but the planes of their orbits all lie close to the plane of the Sun’s equator.

Thus Kant adds an important item to the legacy of Kepler, the esoteric importance of whichwe have already mentioned in the General Foundation: the dogma of the evolutionaryhomogeneousness of all members of our solar system, whereby the single planetscorrespond to the consecutive evolution-stages of the Sun itself.

Kant not only appears as renewer of Kepler’s ideas, but also as the true student of mystical cosmic intuition, inspired by the spirit of Pythagoras. He surmises, from thefact of the scale-like growth in density, a kind of evolutionary scale of the organizationallevel of those beings who dwell on the planets-----those beings who, the more subtle thebodies are in which they are destined to act, can assume an ever higher spiritual level,so that beings most robustly organized become embodied in densest matter, therefore, “enjoy the advantage of closest proximity to the Sun…”




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About 40 years after Kant’s “Natural History and Theory of the Heavens,” Laplacepublished a cosmogonic theory, which conforms in its outline to Kant’s theory, which we shallnot explore in this short sketch. Laplace’s theory is essentially more materialisticallyslanted and endeavors to keep aloof from all “Pythagorean speculation.”

Soon after Kant’s hypothesis became known, the Wittenberg professor Titius published(1766)his tables of planetary distances, later known as Titius-Bode’s theory. He had foundan active law, until then unnoticed, showing the Pythagorean idea of a numerical harmonyin the universe in a new light (See General Foundation, Fifth Lecture). Accepting thedistance of the planet Saturn from the Sun as 100, he obtained the following order:

4 (4 +3) (4 +6) (4 +12) (4 +24) (4 +48) (4 +96)

Mercury Venus Earth Mars ………. Jupiter Saturn

Soon afterward, in place of the fifth-----missing-----member, the first of the planetoids was

discovered, of which we know today total more than700. A new “Newton” is still wantingtoday, to discover the reason of this order.

Schopenhauer in his own way again takes up the old Pythagorean idea of an order of thespheres. Apparently without noticing it, he obtains thereby a strange mental harmonywith Kepler’s views of a regulating world-music. According to his “Metaphysics of Music” (second volume of “The World as Will and Imagination”), music is directly experiencedresonance of theorganization of the universe, and especially of this organization’s hierarchy, inwhich are revealed four “objectivational grades of will,” one above the other, as: therealms of minerals, plants, animals and man. The four-voice-harmony, which seems tohim the most perfect, mirrors this gradation in form of bass, tenor, alto and soprano;soprano corresponds to the human realm, bass to the mineral realm.

As belonging in this context, we might quote a strange remark of Schopenhauer aboutthe music of the planets.

Regarding the Pythagorean harmony of the spheres it should be calculated whatchord accord would result, if a series of tones, corresponding to the differentvelocities of the planets, were arranged so that Neptune should supply the bassand Mercury the soprano.

~ Parerga and Paralipomena, II, 826

But Kepler had already remarked that in the world music, which he too called four-parts,the two outermost planets, Saturn and Jupiter, sang the bass; Mars the tenor; and Earthtogether with Venus, the alto, while Mercury sang the treble.

The idea of a series, expressed in the Titius-Bode formula, is extremely precise, formulatedin a sort of astrological speculation, with which he, usually rather averse to astrology,terminates the first volume of his “Parerga and Paralipomena”:




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… to be sure, the individual’s line of life is not predetermined by the planets, asastrology would have it; but the line of life of man in general, insofar as to eachepoch a planet corresponds in strict order, and his life is therefore successfullyruled by all planets. In the 10 th year of life Mercury rules. As this planet, man

moves easy and swift in the narrowest circle: he is swerved by trifles but he learnsmuch and easily under the rule of the God of cunning and eloquence. With his20 th year the rule of Venus starts: love and women totally own him. In the 30 th

year Mars rules: man now becomes defiant, impetuous, vigorous, brave, and martial. In his 40 th year the four planetoids rule: his life is now amplified, he serves theuseful, according to Vesta, he has learned all he needs to know according to

Pallas, and according to Juno the lady of his house, his wife, rules (here followsan ironical remark). In his 50 th year Jupiter rules. Man has already survived mostof his contemporaries and he feels superior to the new generation. Still enjoying his

full vitality, he is rich in experience and knowledge: he has, according to hisindividuality and position, authority over his entire environment. He is not willing

to be ruled any more; he himself means to rule. It is now he is best fitted to be aleader and ruler in his sphere. Thus Jupiter culminates and 50- year-old man withhim. But then Saturn follows in his 60 th year and with him the heaviness, slow-ness, and tenacity of lead. At last there is Uranus. As the saying is: there one goesto heaven. Neptune, thus called unfortunately by thoughtlessness, I cannot con-sider here because I may not call it by its true name, which is Eros. If I could, I would demonstrate how the end is linked with the beginning, how Eros standsin secret connection with death, according to which Orcus (the underworld of the Romans) or Amenthes, of the Egyptians, the [ isnot the only one who takes, but also the giver, and that death is the great

reservoir of life. Therefore, out of Orcus everything comes, and everything nowalive has already been there…

With this final note to his “Aphorisms to Life’s Wisdom,” Schopenhauer confronts us againwith the fundamental experience of world rhythm, with the alternate rising and diving outof time into eternity-----with the rise and dive in the bottomless, inscrutable ocean of world-memory. Rising and Diving, as Camisso’s naïve islanders of Radak felt dimly in their child-like dance.

Comparing such esoterically inspired perceptions, which continue from Pythagoras’ timeuntil the present day through all stages of astronomic----natural-----philosophical research,

with what the materialistic conception of some modern physicists would like to put inplace of such “mystic speculations,” we are again confronted with the specter of anabsurd accident. This accident is supposed to have created organic life on our Earth, avery rare, if not unique, occurrence in the universe. The reasons are supposed to be theconditions only found on this Earth: a temperature of such and such degrees, water,air, etc.-----conditions which alone make “life” possible, while on the other hand, theplanets owe their origin not to a constructive, but a destructive action: they circle ourSun now as shattered pieces of a second Sun, which may have orbited in the way of the




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double stars on the fixed star sky.

Small Earth, the only one among the millions of stars animated by an unfortunateaccident inhabited by thinking men who were made the unhappy witnesses of a completelysenseless world existence by that accident! Excuse me for refraining from arguing against such

ideas, which have already been rejected in Lectures One and Two of the General Foundation,from the viewpoint of esoteric thinking.

Nobody who once tasted of Pythagoras’ wisdom can fall victim to them. Since it wasimportant to fortify ourselves, emotionally, mentally, and not least, morally, for the greattask awaiting us, we will today let the words of Kepler impress us, those words with whichhe concludes his great work “Harmonices Mundi.” May they act as a call to awaken forall those who are still entangled in materialistic sleep.

…Tycho Brahe thought that those world-globes were not deserted and desolate,but inhabited. Why should then I hesitate to think that the motley mutation seen

on our Earth-globe should not by God’s decree be realized on other world-globestoo? He who has created those species living in water whereto never a breath of air penetrates which those creatures could inhale; who has put in the wide realmof the air winged animals with shining pinions; Who has given to the snow-covered lands of the north the polar bear and the white fox, and gave them therewhales and bird’s eggs for nourishment; who gave to the steaming hot desertsof Arabia lions, and camels to the far-spread plains of Syria, endowing themwith the capacity to endure hunger and thirst: should He have exhausted all Hiscompetence on Earth? Should He not be able to endow with His great good-ness the other world-bodies also, according to His will? To equip them richly

with creatures fitted to either length or shortness of the rotational period, toremoteness or proximity to the Sun, to the varieties of the eccentricities, of brilliance or darkening of the celestial lights, which shine forth in someheavenly region? …

With similar logic we may also advance conjectures regarding the solar orb,which stem from the harmonies and everything connected with them. They areof heavenly weight and we may link them with other conjectures appertaining tothe natural, and not the spiritual, realm, more adaptable to common opinions.

Is that orb empty, and are all those others replete, while everything else is purposefully arranged? If the Sun should exhale black clouds like the clouds

on Earth? If the Sun, through the spots burning out of it and encircling itluminously, should radiate light with its whole fiery body in brilliant little

flames, as Earth is being moistened by fertilizing rains and grows green forever?To whom would such arrangement serve, if the universe itself were waste?

Oh all the senses cry unanimously: here dwell fire-filled bodies, capable of grasping direct intuition. Here in Sun rules the Spirit-fire, if not as king so atleast in his royal fortress.




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Fortified and awakened by such words, we will now begin our task of investigating thepowers which the single planets contribute, to bring individual man’s picture down fromthe Zodiac perspective to Earth; which laws of the great clockwork are here at work, in

whose secret mechanism we have tried today to cast a timid look.

adler - testament of astrology 3

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