JOHANNES KEPLER

Notes & References:

1 ] The standard biography is Kepler by Max Caspar, translated by C. Doris Hellman (Collier-Mac, 1962). Try your local library. More readily available is Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers (Peregrine Books, 1988) which contains a detailed study of Kepler' s troubled life and the development of his ideas. Also recommended is John Banville' s historical novel Kepler cited above.
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2 ] Koestler, op cit. p. 27
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3 ] Joscelyn Godwin: Harmonies of Heaven and Earth (Thames and Hudson 1987), p.130
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4 ] For an annotated collection of Fludd's most important plates, see Robert Fludd: Hermetic Philosopher and Surveyor of Two Worlds by Joscelyn Godwin (Thames and Hudson 1979). Kepler and Fludd corresponded with one another, but Fludd regarded Kepler's mathematical approach to cosmology as superficial, while Kepler regarded Fludd's magical approach as superstitious.
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5 ] Harmonies of Heaven and Earth p.145
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6 ] Quoted in 'Kepler's Belief in Astrology' by Nick Kollerstrom. History and Astrology edited by A. Kitson (Unwin 1989), p.167.
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7 ] Quoted in Kepler's Astrology: Excerpts, selected, translated and edited by Ken Negus (Eucopia Publications 1987). Unless otherwise stated, all quotes by Kepler himself are from this compilation.
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8 ] From a letter to the astronomer David Fabricius quoted in Neo-Astrology: a Copernican Revolution by Michel Gauquelin (Arkana 1991), p.92
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9 ] Kepler later qualified his criticism of the zodiac signs by remarking that, "...the human race has envisioned this partition from the time of the Chaldeans down to our own time". This being so, he wondered whether "God himself does not conform to it... and whether He does not wish to speak to human beings therewith in a language or method of communication that they understand".
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10 ] Ptolemy: Tetrabiblos (Loeb) p.73-5. In Ptolemy's unfinished Harmonics, he proposed the earliest known 'tone-zodiac', linking the 12 signs to musical intervals. This idea has been explored by other astro-musical theorists, notably Rudolph Steiner.
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11 ] Kepler' s belief in the ancient doctrine that the Earth as a whole may be regarded as a living entity is echoed in the 'Gaia principle' popularised by James Lovelock during the 1980s.
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12 ] Koestler op. cit. p.396
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13 ] William Lilly: Christian Astrology (1647, Regulus reprint 1984), p.785 et seq.
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14 ] M. Harding and C. Harvey: Working with Astrology (Arkana 1990), p.11.
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