inside out/outside in - the holy mystery on display

*****

Müsset im Naturbetrachten immer eins wie alles achten:

Nichts ist drinnen, nichts ist draußen;

Denn was innen, das ist außen.

So ergreifet ohne Säumnis

Heilig öffentlich Geheimnis.

Freuet euch des wahren Scheins,

Euch des ernsten Spieles:

Kein Lebendiges ist ein Eins,

Immer ist‘s ein Vieles.

*****

You must, when contemplating nature,

See each thing in its entirety:

Nothing’s inside, nothing outside;

It’s inside out and outside in.

Thus grasp, with no delay

The holy mystery always on display.

The true appearence celebrate,

Take pleasure in the serious play;

No living thing is separate,

It’s a manifold always.

J.W.Goethe, Epirrhema, 1819 (trans. C.C.)

Sleeps a song in things abounding

Look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

*****

Sieh, wie die Himmelsflur

ist eingelegt mit Scheiben lichten Goldes!

Auch nicht der kleinste Kreis, den du da siehst

der nicht im Schwunge wie ein Engel singt

zum Chor der hellgeaugten Cherubim.

So voller Harmonie sind ewige Geister.

Nur wir, weil dies hinfällige Kleid von Staub

ihn grob umhüllt, wir können sie nicht hören.

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1

William Shakespeare, 1564- 1616

Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen,
Die da träumen fort und fort.
Und die Welt hebt an zu singen,
Triffst du nur das Zauberwort.

Sleeps a song in things abounding
that keep dreaming to be heard:
Earth'es tunes will start resounding
if you find the magic word.

Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, Wünschelrute, 1835

Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857)

Max Jacob - poet, jester, astrologer

Max Jacob (1876-1944) was a French painter, poet and writer and became the leader of the avant-garde scene in Paris in the early years of the 20th century. He was a close friend of Picasso in those years, they were roommates and shared a studio. He also practiced astrology, cast charts for friends and acquaintances, intrigued by the richness he found there to portray a character.

In his study ‘Flim Flam’, 1920, he tried to give a new twist to the challenge of creating a ‘portrait’ of a person, basically just seen as a detailed character sketch: he let his protagonists introduce and reveal themselves with their own words and mannerisms. Jacob based his method on astrology and the ancient theory of the four elements. He organized the letters of his correspondents according to their birth dates and recorded their distinctive vocabulary. He was convinced that the words used would reveal both astral sign and element: water is gliding, earth weighty , fire brilliant, air gentle. He perfected this technique with his own comments, seeing himself as a ‘field observer’ of human behavior. (Shaw’s professor Higgins comes to mind.)

The characters of his protagonists were not constructed by the author but came to life by display of their idiosyncratic manners and expressions. Jacob created a magical kaleidoscope of human follies by combining astrological distinctions with his passion for words and language and his curiosity in all forms of human affairs. He was a humorist, preferring the playful mode, the ironic gaze, and embraced the role of jester and magician. His book ‘Mirror of Astrology’ is another example of his whimsical approach.

Max Jacob (1876-1944)

Andre Breton on astrology (II)

Q: What connections did the surrealists have with astrology?

AB: Sporadic unfortunately, and it varied with each individual. Astrology, like poetry, demands not only that you commit yourself to it entirely but also requires specific signs of a predestined nature. For my part, I learnt the basics of astrology around 1927. After that, I was able to benefit a little from Pierre Mabille's extensive knowledge of the subject and he introduced me to Fludd, which allowed me to go beyond the deadly mediocrity of most of modern texts. The surrealists generally took a lively interest in astrology, seeing it from a poetic perspective, without going very deeply into it.

Q: If we can talk of astrology as being considered as a lyrical game, would you go as far as describing astrology as the tool of an architecture of universal relationships?

AB: Not being a geometrician, even less so in the ancient sense of the term, I'm not qualified to talk about that. What I've always valued enormously in astrology is not so much the lyrical game to which it lends itself, as the multi-layered logical game which is a necessary part of it and on which it is founded. Quite apart from the very subtle means of evaluation that astrology uses and its predictive abilities, I consider its capacity for stretching and exercising the mind to be second to none. To unravel a destiny, beginning with the planetary placements, their aspects, their signs and houses, depending on the position of the Ascendant and Midheaven - this requires more than enough mental dexterity to silence any attempts at ridicule and, compared with this sophistication, conventional logical reasoning comes out looking like child's play.

Q: Would you say that astrology could be seen as the golden language of analogy, in the way that counterpoint and harmony are to music?

AB: I have to be excused to some extent, as I lack the musical vocabulary. I would say though, that astrology is the 'golden language' of analogy in that it has created a vast resource of corresponding references between man and nature. I can think of no other system with as great an aspiration to harmony (in the sense that Fourier used that word).

Q: If we take the thorny question of quality in astrology, what do you think about the responsibility involved in being an astrologer?

AB: I consider that responsibility to be enormous, and I also think that the 'International Centre of Astrology' should, as a matter of urgency, warn the public against the venal enterprises and the shameful exploitation of people's credulity which are bringing it into disrepute (newspaper horoscopes etc).

Q: Do you see any common ground between the belief in free will and that of a future that can be predicted?

AB: This brings us back I think, to the case of Jerome Cardan,18 who allowed himself to die of hunger at the age of 75, so that the prediction of his horoscope would be fulfilled, and the truth of astrology would be vindicated. I don't think anything needs to be added to what Grillot de Givry said about this.

Those on the side of free will claim that the death was accomplished through the means of free will; but their opponents maintain that the fatal event was nonetheless predetermined and that it was written in the book of fate that he was to die of hunger whatever might be the reason for this kind of death.

This interview was originally published in the French magazine ‘L' Astrologue’  No 4, 1968

Andre Breton, 1941

Andre Breton on astrology (I)

André Breton (1896-1966) was a French writer and poet and is best known as one of the founders and leaders of the Surrealist movement and a leading exponent of Dadaism, a pioneer in the early- twentieth century anti-rationalist movements in art.

While Surrealism’s debt to psychoanalysis is widely acknowledged, its debt to Western esoteric tradition has been often hinted at but rarely studied. In the essentially conservative world of art-criticism such interests were often considered odd. The interest of other early twentieth-century artists specifically in Theosophy (Wasilly Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Hilma af Klint) and astrology (Gustav Holst and W.B. Yeats) were noted but rather played down.

Andre Breton’s lifelong fascination with astrology is virtually unknown. An interview with Breton on astrology conducted by Jean Carteret and Roger Knare in 1954 gives us a clearer picture.

                                             The interview (part I)

Q: Do you see any value in astrology?

AB: I see astrology as a lady, statuesque, utterly beautiful, and from such a distant realm that she cannot fail to enthral me. In purely physical terms, her attire alone is incomparable. But beyond the realm of the visible, astrology seems to me to contain one of the highest secrets in the world. It's a pity that today - at least in the popular understanding - it's a prostitute who sits on the throne in her place.

Q: Do you think the study of astrology can develop in man a greater awareness of self and of the world?

AB: Definitely. I'd even say that through astrology, two areas of knowledge can be united - knowledge of self and knowledge of the world.

Q: Is astrology solely a man-made creation or is it a formulation of the universe, experienced by man?

AB: Because it is exactly that - a brilliant formulation of relationships between man and the universe, this doesn't create a problem for me. Apart from foolish vanity on his part, man really ought to know that he does not 'create', that he is simply permitted to reveal a little of what is hidden (and to refrain from covering up again as much or more of what has already been revealed) and to free the latent energies within nature. Whether a person devotes themselves to the discovery of Neptune or to that of penicillin, both seem to me to be fulfilling their part in the process of unveiling what is hidden.

Q: Could astrology be considered as an objective way of developing man's poetic sensibilities?

AB: As long as astrologers actually go out there and scrutinise the night sky, let themselves be soaked through by the celestial emanations and then bring this brightness back to the darkness of human existence then yes, all the poetic abilities will play their part. Since the appearance of ephemerides - so practical and - even better, don't you think, within everyone's reach - I think the poetic qualities will undoubtedly play their part.

(to be continued)

Andre Breton (1896-1966)

Henry Miller and his Astrologer

Anais Nin introduced Henry Miller in the mid thirties to Conrad Moricand, a bohemian Swiss astrologer, who also happened to live in Paris. A friendship soon developed. Moricand not only cast his chart and interpreted it for him but also gradually introduced Miller into the world of astrological symbolism, be it at his studio or over a meal in some restaurant. Miller was practically in awe of Moricand’s knowledge and had a profound appreciation for him as a person. He wrote in a letter to Moricand from July 15, 1938: “The evenings I have spent with you are the richest moments of all this part of my life here in Paris. I say all this without the least desire to flatter you. It is merely an expression of the great debt I owe you and which I am pleased to acknowledge and affirm.” At another time he wrote: “For me astrology was just another language to learn, another keyboard to manipulate.  It’s only the poetic aspect of anything which really interests me. … A chart, when properly read, should enable one to understand the overall pattern of one’s life.”

There are obvious touches of astrological symbolism in his writing of the period -Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, the names of which already proclaim their astrological alliance.

In 1947 Miller invited Moricand who was penniless at the time to live with him in Big Sur for the rest of his life, and Moricand arrived at the end of the year. That arrangement quickly turned out to be a disaster, and Moricand eventually returned to Europe.

Miller wrote about this episode, which would be published in 1956 as A Devil in Paradise, and a year later as the third part of Big Sur, called “Paradise lost”.

Later Miller would have this to say abbot astrology:

Astrology does not explain the laws of the universe, and also does not tell us why the universe exists. What astrology does, simply said, is the following: it shows us that there is a relation between macro-cosmos and micro-cosmos, i.e., that there exists a rhythm in the universe, and that the life of man partakes in that rhythm. For centuries men have studied and observed the nature of this rhythm. … The fact remains that the oldest and greatest civilisations that we know have used it as the foundation for thought and action. That astrology deteriorated to a form of fortune-telling is a totally different story.

Henry Miller, in his foreword to 'Henry Miller and his world of Urania', 1960

Henry Miller, (1891-1980)

The astrologer Conrad Moricand

Astrology claims that - as chemistry does for matter - the human being can be reduced to a certain amount of ‘basic units’. The classification is arbitrary, like any classification. But could there be practical evidence? I do believe there is claim for that.

Astrology teaches that there is harmony, analogy, sympathy and antipathy between the different zodiac signs as there is between the individuals being born under their ‘influence’. The horoscope is the geometrical projection of the celestial configuration at the birth for a specific date and a specific place. Every individual is represented therein through the polarity of the seven planets plus Sun and Moon, being interpreted as psychological factors.

The great astrological synthesis is like a mysterious keyboard with the help of which our ‘instinctive rhythms’ are able to discover a world of ‘analogies’. These analogies, taken from the most different realms of life, allow us, before any description of a type, to point out the resonances that a person might experience. Our endeavour is, with the help of a misunderstood language, to create clues and indications in the sensuous realm and thereby enrich our interpretation.

Conrad Moricand, foreword to ‘Mirror of Astrology’ by Max Jacob, 1949

The Swiss astrologer Conrad Moricand, 1887-1954, drawing by Amedeo Modigliani, 1916

George Spencer-Brown - letter to his fiancee

… I cannot change your archetype, my beloved. Nobody can do that. It is manifest and will in its own way determine your life. It is manifest and if you allow yourself to be guarded by it, you will be in heaven. And if you resist, in hell. Not sometime in the future. In this life. That is the law. I did not make it.

I cannot change your archetype but can only unveil it, as others with their own agenda will try to conceal it from you. I cannot change your archetype but I can give it life. I can take care of it, nourish it and accommodate it so that what you are now - in contrast what you will be - will appear impoverished. And you, my beloved, would do the same for me. Not out of a sense of duty but because that is what you are made of. What greater conviction than this can any human being have?

Please notice that I do not try to tell you what your archetype is; nobody can do that. You are always the queen of your own domain. It is up to you to to serve your archetype or to betray it, do as you like.

It is true that love allows us all to enforce that what we really are, and to overthrow the limitations and restrictions of our education and upbringing. Either your strength becomes real now or you will never achieve greatness. You cannot fool the world. Nobody can do that. If you decide for less than you really are the world will disparage you.

All creative people experience difficulty with their family. A family never accommodates the fact that one of their members might be outside their reach. I love my family but I never follow their advice.

Can you see that this letter is not an imposition? I only say what you taught me to say. I only do what you taught me to do. I only love what you taught me to love.

George Spencer-Brown, ‘Only two can play this game’, 1971 (excerpt)

George Spencer-Brown (1923-2016), mathematician, consulting engineer, psychologist, consulting psychotherapist, author, and poet.

He also held world records as a glider pilot, taught at the universities of London, Cambridge and Oxford, where he was successor of Einstein. Perhaps most famously he was the author of a book of mathematical logic and metaphysics entitled ‘Laws of Form’, first published in 1969, praised by Bertrand Russel (“Not since Euclid’s ‘Elements’ have we seen anything like it.”). He defended astrology against its detractors.

"Your beginning..." Hölderlin

Wie du anfängst, wirst du bleiben,

soviel auch wirket die Not

und die Zucht, das meiste nämlich

vermag die Geburt

und der Lichtstrahl, der

dem Neugeborenen begegnet.

Your beginning will always stay with you

even as hardship and necessity do make

their mark, for most power

lies in birth

and in the light that

meets the newborn.

Friedrich Hölderlin, excerpt from “Der Rhein”, 1808 (trans. C.C.)

Friedrich Hölderlin, 1770-1843

Astrology and psychoanalysis (II)

I have listened, systematically, over many years, to astrological textbook and field descriptions of personality and compared their structure to the structure of psychoanalytical oriented descriptions.

What emerged first was that the overt differences of content were much smaller than the discrepancies between the astrological and the psychoanalytical concepts and theories on which the descriptions were based. Much of the astrological information was enriching, not opposing, the psychoanalytic pictures.

- Hai Halevi, Ph.D., psychoanalyst, in his book "Astrology & Psychoanalysis, A transformation towards synthesis", 1987

Astrology and Pychoanalysis (I)

"Being psychoanalysts the astrological thinking should not be alien to us. The basic concept of psychoanalysis and astrology is the idea of very early conditioning that is unconscious and that will be acted out in later life. Psychoanalysis looks at the conditioning in early life whereas astrology looks at the even earlier cosmic conditioning. Both suggest that the development of personality is based on early conditioning and both have a similar aim: making what is unconscious conscious.

We "only" have to assume that there is beside the personal and the collectiveunconscious still a deeper layer to our psyche - the cosmic unconscious. It would mirror our being part of the cosmic order, its rhythms and laws, and contain our conditioning by them as can be seen in the horoscope. Thus the horoscope gives us one more access to the understanding of the psyche.

Sceptics will think that I may project onto my client what I then might find confirmed. But in facing this dilemma psychoanalysis and astrology are also similar - the analyst as well might be projecting a foregone conclusion onto his client."

 - Fritz Riemann, excerpts from an address given at the '4. International Forum for Psychoanalysis', New York, 1972

Music of the spheres

It is uncertain whether human beings were not, from the beginning, dancing to a secret tune of music. Always having heard music from afar and followed the rhythm. The ideas, quickly changing, modulations, alterations and exaltations, the flood of images, how quickly one dissolved into the next! Fugue and variation on just a few themes. In the end, was not all assembling and undoing merely the dance to powerful music that drifted over from unseen terraces and inspired to do the most daring deeds?

                          Botho Strauss, 'Der Fortführer', 2018 (trans. C.C.)

Botho Strauss, German writer, *1944

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre...

Ulysses.

The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre
Observe degree, priority and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans cheque to good and bad: but when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixure!

         Shakespeare, 'Troilus and Cressida', Act I, Scene 3, 1609

'Troilus and Cressida', Munich Kammerspiele, 1986

That mysterious game... (II)

Hesse's Glass Bead Game remains mysterious. Obviously, it is a piece of fiction. But based on a solid foundation. The beads play no role, early on they were used to mark a position but soon after abandoned. It became a purely mental game.

Hesse draws on the deep correlations that exist between the astronomical measurements of the solar system and the musical connotation, that first were discovered by Pythagoras, further advanced by Kepler up to the findings of musical theorists in the twentieth century. So music and mathematics are accounted for. What is missing is the link to interpretation, how the game would impact the particulars of human life. This, I think, is where astrology comes in, making the connection between abstract and concrete, mythic and personal, in a language of images - like music and mathematics transcending cultures and language.

Hesse was in fact well acquainted with astrology. During his long friendship with the architect and astrologer Josef Englert who lived nearby in the Tessin he got an understanding of the workings of astrology and often asked for his help in moments of personal crisis. He memorialized him as the ‘Armenian astrologer’ in “Klingsor’s Last Summer” and as ‘Yup the Magus’ in the “Journey to the East”. Most telling perhaps is the fact that when Hesse published his poem ‘The Last Glass Bead Player’ in 1937 he dedicated it to Josef Englert.

Astrology also played a role in Hesse's relationship with his psychoanalyst Josef Bernhard Lang, who was an astrologer, too. In their correspondence Lang would at times take recourse to casting horoscopes and interpret them for Hesse.

In a diary entry Hesse writes: "And this is not just coincidence - I wanted that, I myself have chosen this ancestry, this confession, this burdensome Protestant sectarianism, I have brought it on myself, and as in the hour of my birth stood Saturn and Mars, Jupiter and Moon - neither could it have been otherwise nor should it have been different, so stood the pious pietist father and the Protestant baptismal font waiting for me."

Hermann Hesse, ‘Briefwechsel mit Josef B. Lang’, 2006

Heimo Schwilk, ‘Hermann Hesse’, 2012

Hermann Hesse, 'Diary 1920/21'

Herman Hesse, 1877-1962) self-portrait, 1919

That mysterious game... (I)

"... The Glass Bead Game was so far developed that it was capable of expressing mathematical processes by special symbols and abbreviations. The players threw these abstract formulas at one another, displaying the sequences and possibilities of their different fields of knowledge. This mathematical as well as astronomical play with formulas required great attentiveness and concentration. Some dreamed of a new alphabet, a new language of symbols through which they could formulate and exchange their new intellectual experiences. It became possible to combine astronomical and musical formulas, and to reduce mathematics and music to a common denominator.

The Game was often called by a different name: Magic Theatre. A theme was stated, elaborated and varied. A Game might start from an astronomical configuration, could further explore and expand the underlying motif or else enrich its expressiveness by allusions to analogous concepts.

It represented a symbolic form of seeking a sublime alchemy, coming close to that what lies beyond all images and multiplicities. It was an attitude, also displayed in music, that alluded to order rather than blind chance. Contraries are recognized as such, but also as opposite poles of a unity. One can be a strict logician and at the same time full of imagination, a player while still devoted to rule and order: crystalline logic and creative imagination simultaneously.

In the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Game, everything actually was all-meaningful. Every symbol and combination of symbols led not just to some scattered examples and proofs but into the innermost heart of the world, towards primal knowledge. Though doubt remained: was the Game merely a formal art, a clever skill, a witty combination? Or was this Royal Game a lingua sacra, a divine language...

One might imagine the Game similar to the pattern of a chess game, except that the significances of the pieces and the potentialities of their relationships to one another multiplied manifold and an actual content has to be ascribed to each piece, each constellation of which this configuration was a symbol.

The true and ultimate skill of the Game is mastery over the expressive and distinct forms of the rules of the Game so as to inject in any given figuration individual and original ideas. The Game is neither philosophy nor religion. It is a discipline of its own, in character most akin to art. It is an art sui generis."

Compilation of quotes from Hermann Hesse, ‘The Glass Bead Game’, 1943 (trans. C.C.)

Hermann Hesse

A reasonable approach

The astro-physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker was ever curious in his quest for an understanding of the universe. When it came to the topic of astrology he seemed to not have forgotten the admonition of his colleague and teacher Werner Heisenberg that physics could only be learned by doing it. In a radio interview in 1976 he retold the story how he took part in a seminar at the University in Strasbourg in 1943, at the Institute of Psychology, led by Prof. Hans Bender and the astrologer Thomas Ring. Having acquainted himself with the necessary skills he then drew up about 60 horoscopes, and when comparing his interpretation with what he knew about the persons whose chart he had cast he admitted to be impressed by the results and acknowledged that astrology seemed to be able to “perceive the gestalt of a person (‘Gestaltwahrnehmung’).”

He found empirical evidence but was at odds how to account for it theoretically. Physics and statistics were both incompatible to the subject, he insisted. As to claims of truth he was skeptical of the habit of physicists to hold only that for true what they have understood so far.

Süddeutscher Rundfunk, 7. Jan. 1976

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1912 -2007)

Everyone is an astrologer

The astrologers were the astronomers in the early days of our history. They perceived in nature fateful, divine signs. Seen that way everyone of us is an astrologer. We all, when meeting people, interpret signs - their facial and bodily expressions. Astrology invites us to talk about a human being in a finely layered and distinct way. I like that…

Adolf Muschg, a Swiss writer, in an interview with a Swiss magazine, 1998

In his Creative Writing classes Muschg sometimes presented the students with astrological constellations and asked them to write a short story where those themes could be displayed in a narrative form.

Adolf Muschg *1934, Swiss novelist

See also 'Astrology - the art and skill of reading signs’ in ‘Thoughts on Astrology’

The Church was not against astrology

Since the Renaissance and the Baroque man was seen as a microcosmos, as a stage, dominated by the same forces and powers that guided the universe but endowed with a free will. Antiquity had deified the planets and each one of them was literally seen as a god, emanating powerful influences that could change the course of human life. The word influence, C.S.Lewis remarked, has lost much of its power and has become by now only a vague and abstract word: for the Renaissance and the Baroque - not for the Middle Ages - the influence of the planets meant a kind of magnetism that connected the material and the spiritual world. Mendez Plancarte, in his overzealousness, tried to play down Sor Joana’s belief in astrology. But in fact it was the majority, in Europe as well as in the New World: the intellectuals included, that still held this belief in astrology. “The orthodox theologians accepted the theory that the planets did not only influence the events and the human psyche but also the live of plants and minerals”.

The church was not against astrology but against a planetary determinism that would contradict free will, and she persecuted as well divination and worship of the celestial bodies (astrolatry). Basically, the problem with which the church was confronted was not so different from what all people experienced from the moment when they began to ponder their wondrous fate on earth: freedom or determination.             

 Octavio Paz, ‘Sor Joana Inez de la Cruz, Or: the Traps of Faith', 1990 (translation C.C.)

Sor Joana de la Cruz (1651-1695), scholar and poet

An ancient tradition of astrology

“The woman seemed too clever, he thought, and too cheeky. But above all, there was something eery and uncanny about her. She was, how shall I say, too much woman, that also colored her thinking. She thinks that thoughts had evolved from feelings and should not lose that connection. Antiquated naturally, outmoded. Dull vagueness, that’s what I called it. And she: creative source.

Night after night she stood beside me on the terrace of my observation tower and explained to me the astronomy that the women of Colchis engaged in, based on the phases of the moon, and she asked me how we name the zodiac, and I had to describe to her their path and the conclusions that I would gather from their movements and constellations for our own fate.

We listened to the music of the spheres, a crystal-clear sound, for which our ears are not tuned but which they, in rare moments of utter concentration, could still perceive. Medea was the first woman who heard this tone the same moment as I did. As if a mighty bow would sweep on a vibrating cord, she said. It was exactly like that. In that night this experience shook me more intensely than usually, and in a different way.

That she did not intend to follow my predictions that I had concluded from the constellations hurt me. For we have in Corinth an age-old astrological tradition, the line of my predecessors is long and their names are held in high esteem, and even if I allow myself to speculate outside the set rules I do still wish to join this venerable line."

                  Christa Wolf, ‘Medea - Stimmen’, 1996 (translation C.C.)

Christa Wolf (1929-2011), German writer

Rilke's request

"Do you remember having once drawn up a horoscope for an acquaintance of mine? - Would you not be tempted to demonstrate your art one more time if I provide you with these dates of a young woman? I would even be more interested in this one than the one you had done before."

Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter from Dec.29th 1921 to Freiherr von Arentin

In the years 1915-1922 Rilke kept a close friendship with the astronomer and mathematician Erwein Freiherr von Arentin who practiced astrology as well. (The dates of the young woman were those of his daughter Ruth. Rilke tried to keep the person anonymous as not to influence von Arentin's reading).

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), painting by Leonid Pasternak