Copyright Michael D. Robbins 2005

Astro-Rayological Interpretation & Charts
Quotes
Biography
Images and Physiognomic Interpretation

to Volume 3 Table of Contents

Johannes Kepler—Astronomer, Astrologer:

Dec 27, 1571, OS, Weil der Stadt, Germany, 2:30 PM, LMT. (Source Cyril Fagan and More Notable Nativities)  2:27 PM, LMT, also given. (Source: from him, in Harmonics, Book IV. Died, November 15, 1630, in Regensburg, Germany



(Ascendant, Gemini with Neptune conjunct the Ascendant; Moon also in Gemini in H12; Sun conjunct Venus in Capricorn; Mercury conjunct Uranus also in Capricorn; Mars in Libra; Jupiter conjunct Pluto in Pisces; Saturn in Scorpio)      

Today, Kepler is most known for his discovery of the Laws of Planetary Motion. This is his fifth ray contribution to humanity’s understanding of our solar system. But Kepler was also an accomplished astrologer, and often made his living in this way. As well, he was a profound metaphysician interested in Platonic thought, and the application of the “Platonic Solids” to an understanding of the planetary orbits. He sought to understand cosmos as order and beauty, and ultimately, was interested in the “harmony of the spheres”. He is more closely related to the second ray than may be realized. Plato, too, blended the third and second rays in his energy system.         

You are asking about a scholarly person whose life was totally devoted to the reality of the Harmony of the Spheres or Worlds. The Mind of God was working out in Geometry and Harmony and imprinted itself upon the world around us, and in the book of nature. The tool for interpreting creation was mathematics, where every number had an inner meaning and reason behind it. For him the world is not an aggregate of dead bodies. Everywhere he finds life as an expression of a psychic principle; everywhere he suspects psychic influences. He wanted to become a Theologian, but later found himself becoming as a priest of God in the book of nature, offering his work to man as a hymn to the Creator.

In Dioptrice, he was the one who developed the Science of Sight or Vision. He did not start with doubt as Descartes, but built his work upon a positive and unquestioned faith, the signature of a soft-line soul. Religion was of great importance in his life. Everywhere he looks for symmetry, for analogies, for a well-proportioned equalizing of the parts in accordance with a static order, in contemplation of which he goes into the most extreme rapture. Only a second ray soul could explain the importance of both harmony and faith in the life of this man. He was a true Pythagorean and neo-platonist.  

You will also find that JK is not mentioned in A Treatise on Cosmic Fire on page 1037 together with Galileo, Newton and Copernicus in relation to the Mahachohan's department. The reason being that his soul is not along that line, although his Monad is. So there is a strong link to the Mahachohan's department, but in a more primary way. It is even true that JK was invited to England by Bacon, whom even critisized his work on the planets. Maybe because of the inherent differences of the two departments involved.

Ray formula:  
Monad: R3      
Soul: R2         
Persona: R7   
Mental: R5/R3
Astral: R6       
Physical: R7/R3         

"Ocuras hominum, o quantum est in rebus inane." (O the cares of man, how much of everything is futile.)           

German astronomer and mathematician who discovered three laws of planetary motion. Assistant, then successor to Tycho Brahe; upholder of Copernicus’ theories. Also wrote astrological texts of the planetary influences.

"I was merely thinking God's thoughts after him. Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature," wrote Kepler, "it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."

The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.

Nature uses as little as possible of anything

 

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
Johannes Kepler was born in Weil der Stadt in Swabia, in southwest Germany. His paternal grandfather, Sebald Kepler, was a respected craftsman who served as mayor of the city; his maternal grandfather, Melchior Guldenmann, was an innkeeper and mayor of the nearby village of Eltingen. His father, Heinrich Kepler, was "an immoral, rough and quarrelsome soldier," according to Kepler, and he described his mother in similar unflattering terms. From 1574 to 1576 Johannes lived with his grandparents; in 1576 his parents moved to nearby Leonberg, where Johannes entered the Latin school. In 1584 he entered the Protestant seminary at Adelberg, and in 1589 he began his university education at the Protestant university of Tübingen. Here he studied theology and read widely. He passed the M.A. examination in 1591 and continued his studies as a graduate student.
Kepler's teacher in the mathematical subjects was Michael Maestlin (1550-1635). Maestlin was one of the earliest astronomers to subscribe to Copernicus's heliocentric theory, although in his university lectures he taught only the Ptolemaic system. Only in what we might call graduate seminars did he acquaint his students, among whom was Kepler, with the technical details of the Copernican system. Kepler stated later that at this time he became a Copernican for "physical or, if you prefer, metaphysical reasons."
In 1594 Kepler accepted an appointment as professor of mathematics at the Protestant seminary in Graz (in the Austrian province of Styria). He was also appointed district mathematician and calendar maker. Kepler remained in Graz until 1600, when all Protestants were forced to convert to Catholicism or leave the province, as part of Counter Reformation measures. For six years, Kepler taught arithmetic, geometry (when there were interested students), Virgil, and rhetoric. In his spare time he pursued his private studies in astronomy and astrology. In 1597 Kepler married Barbara Müller. In that same year he published his first important work, The Cosmographic Mystery, in which he argued that the distances of the planets from the Sun in the Copernican system were determined by the five regular solids, if one supposed that a planet's orbit was circumscribed about one solid and inscribed in another.
Kepler's model to explain the relative distances of the planets from the Sun in the Copernican System.
Except for Mercury, Kepler's construction produced remarkably accurate results. Because of his talent as a mathematician, displayed in this volume, Kepler was invited by Tycho Brahe to Prague to become his assistant and calculate new orbits for the planets from Tycho's observations. Kepler moved to Prague in 1600.
Kepler served as Tycho Brahe's assistant until the latter's death in 1601 and was then appointed Tycho's successor as Imperial Mathematician, the most prestigious appointment in mathematics in Europe. He occupied this post until, in 1612, Emperor Rudolph II was deposed. In Prague Kepler published a number of important books. In 1604 Astronomia pars Optica ("The Optical Part of Astronomy") appeared, in which he treated atmospheric refraction but also treated lenses and gave the modern explanation of the workings of the eye; in 1606 he published De Stella Nova ("Concerning the New Star") on the new star that had appeared in 1604; and in 1609 his Astronomia Nova ("New Astronomy") appeared, which contained his first two laws (planets move in elliptical orbits with the sun as one of the foci, and a planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times). Whereas other astronomers still followed the ancient precept that the study of the planets is a problem only in kinematics, Kepler took an openly dynamic approach, introducing physics into the heavens.
In 1610 Kepler heard and read about Galileo's discoveries with the spyglass. He quickly composed a long letter of support which he published as Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo ("Conversation with the Sidereal Messenger"), and when, later that year, he obtained the use of a suitable telescope, he published his observations of Jupiter's satellites under the title Narratio de Observatis Quatuor Jovis Satellitibus ("Narration about Four Satellites of Jupiter observed"). These tracts were an enormous support to Galileo, whose discoveries were doubted or denied by many. Both of Kepler's tracts were quickly reprinted in Florence. Kepler went on to provide the beginning of a theory of the telescope in his Dioptrice, published in 1611.
During this period the Keplers had three children (two had been born in Graz but died within months), Susanna (1602), who married Kepler's assistant Jakob Bartsch in 1630, Friedrich (1604-1611), and Ludwig (1607-1663). Kepler's wife, Barbara, died in 1612. In that year Kepler accepted the position of district mathematician in the city of Linz, a position he occupied until 1626. In Linz Kepler married Susanna Reuttinger. The couple had six children, of whom three died very early.
In Linz Kepler published first a work on chronology and the year of Jesus's birth, In German in 1613 and more amply in Latin in 1614: De Vero Anno quo Aeternus Dei Filius Humanam Naturam in Utero Benedictae Virginis Mariae Assumpsit (Concerning the True Year in which the Son of God assumed a Human Nature in the Uterus of the Blessed Virgin Mary"). In this work Kepler demonstrated that the Christian calendar was in error by five years, and that Jesus had been born in 4 BC, a conclusion that is now universally accepted. Between 1617 and 1621 Kepler published Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae ("Epitome of Copernican Astronomy"), which became the most influential introduction to heliocentric astronomy; in 1619 he published Harmonice Mundi ("Harmony of the World"), in which he derived the heliocentric distances of the planets and their periods from considerations of musical harmony. In this work we find his third law, relating the periods of the planets to their mean orbital radii.
In 1615-16 there was a witch hunt in Kepler's native region, and his own mother was accused of being a witch. It was not until late in 1620 that the proceedings against her ended with her being set free. At her trial, her defense was conducted by her son Johannes.
1618 marked the beginning of the Thirty Years War, a war that devastated the German and Austrian region. Kepler's position in Linz now became progressively worse, as Counter Reformation measures put pressure on Protestants in the Upper Austria province of which Linz was the capital. Because he was a court official, Kepler was exempted from a decree that banished all Protestants from the province, but he nevertheless suffered persecution. During this time Kepler was having his Tabulae Rudolphinae ("Rudolphine Tables") printed, the new tables, based on Tycho Brahe's accurate observations, calculated according to Kepler's elliptical astronomy. When a peasant rebellion broke out and Linz was besieged, a fire destroyed the printer's house and shop, and with it much of the printed edition. Soldiers were garrisoned in Kepler's house. He and his family left Linz in 1626. The Tabulae Rudolphinae were published in Ulm in 1627.
Kepler now had no position and no salary. He tried to obtain appointments from various courts and returned to Prague in an effort to pry salary that was owed him from his years as Imperial Mathematician from the imperial treasury. He died in Regensburg in 1630. Besides the works mentioned here, Kepler published numerous smaller works on a variety of subjects.
Johannes Kepler
His Life, His Laws and Times


A Short Biography
Johannes Kepler was born at 2:30 PM on December 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Württemburg, in the Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality. He was a sickly child and his parents were poor. But his evident intelligence earned him a scholarship to the University of Tübingen to study for the Lutheran ministry. There he was introduced to the ideas of Copernicus and delighted in them. In 1596, while a mathematics teacher in Graz, he wrote the first outspoken defense of the Copernican system, the Mysterium Cosmographicum.
Kepler's family was Lutheran and he adhered to the Augsburg Confession a defining document for Lutheranism. However, he did not adhere to the Lutheran position on the real presence and refused to sign the Formula of Concord. Because of his refusal he was excluded from the sacrament in the Lutheran church. This and his refusal to convert to Catholicism left him alienated by both the Lutherans and the Catholics. Thus he had no refuge during the Thirty-Years War.

The Holy Roman Empire of German Nationality at the Time of Kepler
Kepler was forced to leave his teaching post at Graz due to the counter Reformation because he was Lutheran and moved to Prague to work with the renowned Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. He inherited Tycho's post as Imperial Mathematician when Tycho died in 1601. Using the precise data that Tycho had collected, Kepler discovered that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse. In 1609 he published Astronomia Nova, delineating his discoveries, which are now called Kepler's first two laws of planetary motion. And what is just as important about this work, "it is the first published account wherein a scientist documents how he has coped with the multitude of imperfect data to forge a theory of surpassing accuracy" (O. Gingerich in forward to Johannes Kepler New Astronomy translated by W. Donahue, Cambridge Univ Press, 1992), a fundamental law of nature. Today we call this the scientific method.
In 1612 Lutherans were forced out of Prague, so Kepler moved on to Linz. His wife and two sons had recently died. He remarried happily, but had many personal and financial troubles. Two infant daughters died and Kepler had to return to Württemburg where he successfully defended his mother against charges of witchcraft. In 1619 he published Harmonices Mundi, in which he describes his "third law."
In spite of more forced relocations, Kepler published the seven-volume Epitome Astronomiae in 1621. This was his most influential work and discussed all of heliocentric astronomy in a systematic way. He then went on to complete the Rudolphine Tables that Tycho had started long ago. These included calculations using logarithms, which he developed, and provided perpetual tables for calculating planetary positions for any past or future date. Kepler used the tables to predict a pair of transits by Mercury and Venus of the Sun, although he did not live to witness the events.
Johannes Kepler died in Regensburg in 1630, while on a journey from his home in Sagan to collect a debt. His grave was demolished within two years because of the Thirty Years War. Frail of body, but robust in mind and spirit, Kepler was scrupulously honest to the data.
A List of Kepler's Firsts
• First to correctly explain planetary motion, thereby, becoming founder of celestial mechanics and the first "natural laws" in the modern sense; being universal, verifiable, precise.
In his book Astronomia Pars Optica, for which he earned the title of founder of modern optics he was the:
• First to investigate the formation of pictures with a pin hole camera;
• First to explain the process of vision by refraction within the eye;
• First to formulate eyeglass designing for nearsightedness and farsightedness;
• First to explain the use of both eyes for depth perception.
In his book Dioptrice (a term coined by Kepler and still used today) he was the:
• First to describe: real, virtual, upright and inverted iimages and magnification;
• First to explain the principles of how a telescope works;
• First to discover and describe the properties of total internal reflection.
In addition:
• His book Stereometrica Doliorum formed the basis of integral calculus.
• First to explain that the tides are caused by the Moon (Galileo reproved him for this).
• Tried to use stellar parallax caused by the Earth's orbit to measure the distance to the stars; the same principle as depth perception. Today this branch of research is called astrometry.
• First to suggest that the Sun rotates about its axis in Astronomia Nova
• First to derive the birth year of Christ, that is now universally accepted.
• First to derive logarithms purely based on mathematics, independent of Napier's tables published in 1614.
• He coined the word "satellite" in his pamphlet Narratio de Observatis a se quatuor Iovis sattelitibus erronibus

Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion
Kepler was assigned the task by Tycho Brahe to analyze the observations that Tycho had made of Mars. Of all the planets, the predicted position of Mars had the largest errors and therefore posed the greatest problem. Tycho's data were the best available before the invention of the telescope and the accuracy was good enough for Kepler to show that Mars' orbit would precisely fit an ellipse. In 1605 he announced The First Law:
Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus.
The figure below illustrates two orbits with the same semi-major axis, focus and orbital period: one a circle with an eccentricity of 0.0; the other an ellipse with an eccentricity of 0.8.

Circular and Elliptical Orbits Having the Same Period and Focus
Prior to this in 1602, Kepler found from trying to calculate the position of the Earth in its orbit that as it sweeps out an area defined by the Sun and the orbital path of the Earth that:
The radius vector describes equal areas in equal times. (The Second Law)
Kepler published these two laws in 1609 in his book Astronomia Nova.
For a circle the motion is uniform as shown above, but in order for an object along an elliptical orbit to sweep out the area at a uniform rate, the object moves quickly when the radius vector is short and the object moves slowly when the radius vector is long.
On May 15, 1618 he discovered The Third Law:
The squares of the periodic times are to each other as the cubes of the mean distances.
This law he published in 1619 in his Harmonices Mundi . It was this law, not an apple, that lead Newton to his law of gravitation. Kepler can truly be called the founder of celestial mechanics.

Kepler was born on December 27, 1571 at the Imperial Free City of Weil der Stadt (now part of the Stuttgart Region in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, 30 km west of Stuttgart's city center). His grandfather had been Lord Mayor of that town, but by the time Johannes was born, the Kepler family fortunes were in decline. His father earned a precarious living as a mercenary, and abandoned the family when Johannes was 17. His mother, an inn-keeper's daughter, had a reputation for involvement in witchcraft. Born prematurely, Johannes is said to have been a weak and sickly child, but despite his ill health, he was precociously brilliant.
Though he excelled in his schooling, Kepler was frequently bullied, and was plagued by a belief that he was physically repulsive, thoroughly unlikable and, compared to the other pupils, an outsider. This ostracizing probably led him to turn to the world of ideas, as well as an abiding religious conviction, for solace.
He was introduced to astronomy/astrology at an early age, and developed a love for that discipline that would span his entire life. At age six, he observed the Comet of 1577, writing that he "...was taken by [his] mother to a high place to look at it." At age nine, he observed another astronomical event, the Lunar eclipse of 1580, recording that he remembered being "called outdoors" to see it and that the moon "appeared quite red."
In 1587, Kepler began attending the University of Tübingen, where he proved himself to be a superb mathematician. Upon his graduation from that school in 1591, he went on to pursue study in theology, becoming a part of the Tübingen faculty. However, before he took his final exams he was recommended for the vacant post of teacher of mathematics and astronomy at the Protestant school in Graz, Austria. He accepted the position in April of 1594, at the age of 23.
In April 1597, Kepler married Barbara Muehleck. She died in 1611 and was survived by two children.
In December 1599, Tycho Brahe wrote to Kepler, inviting Kepler to assist him at Benatek outside Prague. After Tycho's death, Kepler was appointed Imperial Mathematician (from November 1601 to 1630) to the Habsburg Emperors.
In October 1604, Kepler observed the supernova which was subsequently named Kepler's Star. In January 1612 the Emperor died, and Kepler took the post of provincial mathematician in Linz.
In 1611, Kepler published a monograph on the origins of snowflakes, the first known work on the subject. He correctly theorized that their hexagonal nature was due to cold, but did not ascertain a physical cause for this. The question of snowflakes was not resolved until the 20th century.
On March 8, 1618 Kepler discovered the third law of planetary motion: distance cubed over time squared. He initially rejected this idea, but later confirmed it on May 15 of the same year.
In August of 1620, Katherine, Kepler's mother, was arrested in Leonberg as a witch; she was imprisoned for 14 months. She was released in October 1621 after attempts to convict her failed. Even though she was subjected to torture, she refused to confess to the charges. However, only the courageous personal intervention of Kepler (despite the risk to be arrested as well) and his reputation as the famous Imperial Mathematician rescued her.
On November 15, 1630 Kepler died of a fever in Regensburg.
Scientific work


Kepler's Platonic solid model of the Solar system from Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596)
Like previous astronomers, Kepler initially believed that celestial objects moved in perfect circles. These models were consistent with observations and with the Platonic idea that the sphere was the perfect shape. However, after spending twenty years doing calculations with data collected by Tycho Brahe, Kepler concluded that the circular model of planetary motion was inconsistent with that data. Using Tycho's data, Kepler was able to formulate three laws of planetary motion, now known as Kepler's laws, in which planets move in ellipses, not circles. Using that knowledge, he was the first astronomer to successfully predict a transit of Venus (for the year 1631).
Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion while trying to achieve the Pythagorean purpose of finding the harmony of the celestial spheres. In his cosmologic vision, it was not a coincidence that the number of perfect polyhedra was one less than the number of known planets. Having embraced the Copernican system, he set out to prove that the distances from the planets to the sun were given by spheres inside perfect polyhedra, all of which were nested inside each other. The smallest orbit, that of Mercury, was the innermost sphere. He thereby identified the five Platonic solids with the five intervals between the six known planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn; and the five classical elements.

Closeup of the model
In 1596 Kepler published Mysterium Cosmographicum, or The Cosmic Mystery. Here is a selection explaining the relation between the planets and the Platonic solids:
… Before the universe was created, there were no numbers except the Trinity, which is God himself… For, the line and the plane imply no numbers: here infinitude itself reigns. Let us consider, therefore, the solids. We must first eliminate the irregular solids, because we are only concerned with orderly creation. There remain six bodies, the sphere and the five regular polyhedra. To the sphere corresponds the heaven. On the other hand, the dynamic world is represented by the flat-faces solids. Of these there are five: when viewed as boundaries, however, these five determine six distinct things: hence the six planets that revolve about the sun. This is also the reason why there are but six planets…
… I have further shown that the regular solids fall into two groups: three in one, and two in the other. To the larger group belongs, first of all, the Cube, then the Pyramid, and finally the Dodecahedron. To the second group belongs, first, the Octahedron, and second, the Icosahedron. That is why the most important portion of the universe, the Earth—where God's image is reflected in man—separates the two groups. For, as I have proved next, the solids of the first group must lie beyond the earth's orbit, and those of the second group within… Thus I was led to assign the Cube to Saturn, the Tetrahedron to Jupiter, the Dodecahedron to Mars, the Icosahedron to Venus, and the Octahedron to Mercury…
To emphasize his theory, Kepler envisaged an impressive model of the universe which shows a cube, inside a sphere, with a tetrahedron inscribed in it; another sphere inside it with a dodecahedron inscribed; a sphere with an icosahedron inscribed inside; and finally a sphere with an octahedron inscribed. Each of these celestial spheres had a planet embedded within them, and thus defined the planet's orbit.
On October 17, 1604, Kepler observed that an exceptionally bright star had suddenly appeared in the constellation Ophiuchus. (It was first observed by several others on October 9.) The appearance of the star, which Kepler described in his book De Stella nova in pede Serpentarii ('On the New Star in Ophiuchus's Foot'), provided further evidence that the cosmos was not changeless; this was to influence Galileo in his argument. It has since been determined that the star was a supernova, the second in a generation, later called Kepler's Star or Supernova 1604. No further supernovae have since been observed with certainty in the Milky Way, though others outside our galaxy have been seen.


Remnant of Kepler's Supernova SN 1604.
In his 1619 book, Harmonices Mundi or Harmony of the Worlds, as well as the aforementioned Mysterium Cosmographicum, he also made an association between the Platonic solids with the classical conception of the elements: the tetrahedron was the form of fire, the octahedron was that of air, the cube was earth, the icosahedron was water, and the dodecahedron was the cosmos as a whole or ether. There is some evidence this association was of ancient origin, as Plato tells of one Timaeus of Locri who thought of the Universe as being enveloped by a gigantic dodecahedron while the other four solids represent the "elements" of fire, air, earth, and water.
To his disappointment, Kepler's attempts to fix the orbits of the planets within a set of polyhedrons never worked out, but it is a testimony to his integrity as a scientist that when the evidence mounted against the cherished theory he worked so hard to prove, he abandoned it.
His most significant achievements came from the realization that the planets moved in elliptical, not circular, orbits. This realization was a direct consequence of his failed attempt to fit the planetary orbits within polyhedra. Kepler's willingness to abandon his most cherished theory in the face of precise observational evidence also indicates that he had a very modern attitude to scientific research. Kepler also made great steps in trying to describe the motion of the planets by appealing to a force which resembled magnetism, which he believed emanated from the sun. Although he did not discover gravity, he seems to have attempted to invoke the first empirical example of a universal law to explain the behaviour of both earthly and heavenly bodies.
Kepler also made fundamental investigations into combinatorics, geometrical optimization, and natural phenomena such as snowflakes, always with an emphasis on form and design. He was also one of the founders of modern optics, defining e.g. antiprisms and the Kepler telescope (see Kepler's books Astronomiae Pars Optica — i.a. theoretical explanation of the camera obscura — and Dioptrice). In addition, since he was the first to recognize the non-convex regular solids (such as the stellated dodecahedra), they are named Kepler solids in his honor.
In 1632, only two years after his death, his grave was demolished by the Swedish army in the Thirty Years' War.
Kepler and Astrology
Kepler disdained astrologers who pandered to the tastes of the common man without knowledge of the abstract and general rules, but he saw compiling prognostications as a justified means of supplementing his meagre income. Yet, it would be a mistake to take Kepler's astrological interests as merely pecuniary. As one historian, John North, put it, 'had he not been an astrologer he would very probably have failed to produced his planetary astronomy in the form we have it.'
Kepler believed in astrology in the sense that he was convinced that astrological aspects physically and really affected humans as well as the weather on earth. He strove to unravel how and why that was the case and tried to put astrology on a surer footing, which resulted in the On the more certain foundations of astrology (1601), in which, among other technical innovations, he was the first to propose the quincunx aspect. In The Intervening Third Man, or a warning to theologians, physicians and philosophers (1610), posing as a third man between the two extreme positions for and against astrology, Kepler advocated that a definite relationship between heavenly phenomena and earthly events could be established.
At least 800 horoscopes and natal charts drawn up by Kepler are still extant, several of himself and his family, accompanied by some unflattering remarks. As part of his duties as district mathematician to Graz, Kepler issued a prognostication for 1595 in which he forecast a peasant uprising, Turkish invasion and bitter cold, all of which happened and brought him renown. Kepler is known to have compiled prognostications for 1595 to 1606, and from 1617 to 1624. As court mathematician, he explained to Rudolf II the horoscopes of the Emperor Augustus and Muhammad, and gave astrological prognosis for the outcome of a war between the Republic of Venice and Paul V. In the On the new star (1606) Kepler explicated the meaning of the new star of 1604 as the conversion of America, downfall of Islam and return of Christ. The De cometis libelli tres (1619) is also replete with astrological predictions.